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A Treatise of Humean Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into The Metaphysics of Laws; And, Dialogues Concerning Natural Philosophy

Dewar, Neil and Weatherall, James Owen (2024) A Treatise of Humean Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into The Metaphysics of Laws; And, Dialogues Concerning Natural Philosophy. [Preprint]

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Abstract

This paper contends that Humeanism suffers from a major flaw: it is unable to explain why the practice of experimental science—i.e., the practice of creating novel circumstances and seeing what happens—should be expected to lead to scientific knowledge. In particular, it is unclear how the Humean can make sense of local, concrete inquiry yielding knowledge which is global in scope, lawlike in character, and counterfactually robust. As a result, Humeanism is left without a plausible account of scientific epistemology.

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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Dewar, Neilnad42@cam.ac.uk0000-0001-6623-4529
Weatherall, James Owenweatherj@uci.edu0000-0003-1461-7821
Keywords: Humeanism, laws of nature, experiment, intervention
Subjects: General Issues > Laws of Nature
Depositing User: James Owen Weatherall
Date Deposited: 21 Apr 2026 12:44
Last Modified: 21 Apr 2026 12:44
Item ID: 29270
Subjects: General Issues > Laws of Nature
Date: 2024
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/29270

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