Adlam, Emily (2025) Constraints and Causal Powers. [Preprint]

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Abstract

I propose a variant on a Humean dualist view of lawhood in which the world is ultimately governed by global constraints, but we extract local content from it by formulating conditional descriptions in terms of concrete entities and causal powers, where the entities and powers are arrived at jointly on the basis of the pragmatic usefulness of the patterns they encode. Thus in this picture we have both a realm of global constraints, and also a realm of causal powers which earn their status in our ontology in virtue of featuring in the best set of conditional statements that can be extracted from the global constraints. I argue that this approach has an advantage over Humean dualist views in which causal powers are irreducible, because it is a better fit with important trends in modern physics.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Adlam, Emily eadlam90@gmail.com
Additional Information:	Forthcoming in Project Nomos edited volume on the metaphysics of laws and powers
Keywords:	laws of nature; causal powers; constraints; Humean dualist views
Subjects:	General Issues > Causation General Issues > Laws of Nature
Depositing User:	Dr Emily Adlam
Date Deposited:	07 Nov 2025 13:09
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2025 13:09
Item ID:	27143
Subjects:	General Issues > Causation General Issues > Laws of Nature
Date:	November 2025
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/27143

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