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Author:   Marc Lange (Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 21.10cm
Weight:   0.408kg
ISBN:  

9780195328134

ISBN 10:   0195328132
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   22 October 2009
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

"Preface Chapter 1: Laws Form Counterfactually Stable Sets 1: Welcome 2: Their necessity sets the laws apart 3: The laws's persistence under counterfactuals 4: Nomic preservation 5: Beyond nomic preservation 6: A host of related problems: triviality, circularity, arbitrariness 7: Sub-nomic stability 8: No nonmaximal set containing accidents possesses sub-nomic stability 9: How two sub-nomically stable sets must be related: multiple strata of natural laws 10: Why the laws would still have been laws 11: Conclusion: laws form stable sets Chapter 2: Natural Necessity 1: Our goal in this chapter 2: The Euthyphro question 3: David Lewis's ""Best-System Account"" 4: Lewis's account and the laws's supervenience 5: The Euthyphro question returns 6: Are all relative necessities created equal? 7: The modality principle 8: A proposal for distinguishing genuine from merely relative modalities 9: Borrowing a strategy from Chapter 1 10: Necessity as maximal invariance 11: The laws form a system 12: Scientific essentialism squashes the pyramid 13: Why there is a natural ordering of the genuine modalities 14: Why there is a natural ordering of the genuine modalities Chapter 3: Three Payoffs of My Account 1: The itinerary 2: Could the laws of nature change? 3: Why the laws are immutable 4: Symmetry principles as meta-laws 5: The symmetry meta-laws form a nomically stable set 6: The relation between chancy facts and deterministic laws 7: How to account for the relation Chapter 4: A World of Subjunctives 1: What if the lawmakers were subjunctive facts? 2: The lawmakers's regress 3: Stability 4: Avoiding adhocery 5: Instantaneous rates of change and the causal explanation problem 6: Et in Arcadia ego 7: The rule of law 8: Why the laws must be complete 9: Envoi: Am I cheating?"

Reviews

<br> This book presents a compact yet thorough exposition and defense of an important position about the metaphysics of natural laws. The level of philosophical argumentation is consistently high, and while the dialectic gets quite intricate at times, Language more than compensates by writing in a lucid and thoroughly engaging manner. I think it's a must read, for anyone interested in the nature of natural laws. --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews<p><br>

"""This book presents a compact yet thorough exposition and defense of an important position about the metaphysics of natural laws. The level of philosophical argumentation is consistently high, and while the dialectic gets quite intricate at times, Language more than compensates by writing in a lucid and thoroughly engaging manner. I think it's a must read, for anyone interested in the nature of natural laws."" --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews"

Marc Lange takes a refreshingly open-minded and original approach to laws of nature... highly recommended to all philosophers of science who are interested in laws of nature and neighbouring topics. Reading Lange's book will certainly pay off as a serious and carefully argued challenge to many received opinions on laws of nature. Alexander Reutlinger, The Philosophical Quarterly

This book presents a compact yet thorough exposition and defense of an important position about the metaphysics of natural laws. The level of philosophical argumentation is consistently high, and while the dialectic gets quite intricate at times, Language more than compensates by writing in a lucid and thoroughly engaging manner. I think it's a must read, for anyone interested in the nature of natural laws. --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Author Information

Marc Lange is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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