Laws and Other Worlds: A Humean Account of Laws and Counterfactuals (The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science)

Fred Wilson. Includes Indexes. Bibliography: P. 315-321. Half Title......Page 1 Series Title......Page 2 Title Page......Page 3 Copyright......Page 4 Dedication......Page 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS......Page 7 PREFACE......Page 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 15 I The Aims of Science......Page 17 II Ideals and Research......Page 44 I Introduction: Counterfactuals and the Humean Account of Laws......Page 88 II Accidental Generalities......Page 115 III Laws as Relations among Universals: A Recent Defence of Necessary Connections......Page 127 I Introduction......Page 149 II The Possible Worlds Account of Counterfactuals......Page 150 III How Possible Are Possible Worlds?......Page 155 IV Nomic and Causal Dependence......Page 166 V Similarity among Possible Worlds......Page 171 VI Lewis' Regularity View of Laws......Page 184 VII Are There Counterfactual Conditionals that Involve No Laws?......Page 188 i) Semantics of Counterfactuals......Page 211 ii) Causal Discourse......Page 240 iii) Causal Pre-emption......Page 250 iv) Which Belief-Contravening Assumptions Are Reasonable?......Page 259 v) Counterfactuals and Inductive Support......Page 296 IX Conclusion......Page 304 Section 1......Page 307 Section 2......Page 309 Section 1......Page 312 Section 2......Page 315 Section 3......Page 316 Section 1......Page 317 Section 3......Page 318 Section 5......Page 320 Section 6......Page 321 Section 7......Page 322 Section 8......Page 323 Section 9......Page 329 BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 331 R......Page 338 W......Page 339 C......Page 340 E......Page 341 L......Page 342 R......Page 343 W......Page 344