Natural laws Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

2025

In "A Modest Proposal Concerning Laws, Counterfactuals, and Explanations," the first chapter of Tim Maudlin's book The Metaphysics within Physics (Maudlin 2010), Tim Maudlin makes the argument that laws of nature ought to be considered as ontologically primary. In the pages that follow, after defining some terms, I will attempt three things. First, and foremost, throughout this paper I will argue the following thesis: in key parts of the chapter, Maudlin does not make a clear distinction between the laws of nature and scientific theories. Second, I will provide a brief overview of the arguments of key authors that Maudlin addresses in his text. In giving these overviews, I will point out problems with points where Maudlin addresses their accounts, and how several of these problems stem from the lack of a distinction between scientific theories and laws of nature. Third, I will do my best to accurately and clearly articulate Maudlin's proposal for the ontological status of the laws of nature.

2025, Challenges

Indigenous Peoples associate their own laws with the laws of the natural world, which are formally known as or translated as Natural or First Law. These laws come from the Creator and the Land through our ancestral stories and therefore, they are sacred. All aspects of life and existence depend on living and following these natural First Laws. Since colonization, Indigenous Peoples’ Natural Laws have been forcibly replaced by modern-day laws that do not take into account the sacred relationship between the Earth and all of her inhabitants. The force of societies who live outside of Natural Law has ensured the modern-day consequences of not living in balance with nature. Pandemics and global environmental change, including climate change, are all consequences of not following the Natural Laws that are encapsulated by the interconnected nature of the universe. Here we discuss Natural Law from an Indigenous paradigm and worldview which carries implications for planetary health and wide...

2025, History of Political Thought, vol. 43: 5

Bruno Latour has argued that, following the hypothesis of James Lovelock
and Lynn Margulis, Earth in the era of the Anthropocene could be interpreted on the model of non-sovereignty or shared sovereignty. The article argues that theories of res publica give us a particular insight. Paradoxically, Lucretius rather than Cicero might be our best start — in particular, his notion of foedera naturae (laws or pacts of nature). A pact that natura gubernans concludes with atoms is formulated in the language of Roman politics of the republican era and it brings the issues of shared sovereignty into the forefront of discussion.

2024

In this paper I examine and question Marc Lange’s account of laws, and his claim that the law delineating the range of natural kinds of fundamental particle has a lesser grade of necessity that the laws connecting the fundamental... more

2024

Hobbes may be interpreted as a "Machiavellian" in this sense-i.e. the sovereign's ability to define terms is merely a power play and a means by which the constituents may be better controlled. This, however, does not necessarily encompass the whole truth. Language is an epistemological, as well as a political concern. 13 Leviathan, Chapter XI, 151; Tuck edition, 70.

2024, Forests

Plant leaves exhibit diverse shapes that enable them to utilize a light resource maximally. If there were a general parametric model that could be used to calculate leaf area for different leaf shapes, it would help to elucidate the adaptive evolutional link among plants with the same or similar leaf shapes. We propose a simplified version of the original Gielis equation (SGE), which was developed to describe a variety of object shapes ranging from a droplet to an arbitrary polygon. We used this equation to fit the leaf profiles of 53 species (among which, 48 bamboo plants, 5 woody plants, and 10 geographical populations of a woody plant), totaling 3310 leaves. A third parameter (namely, the floating ratio c in leaf length) was introduced to account for the case when the theoretical leaf length deviates from the observed leaf length. For most datasets, the estimates of c were greater than zero but less than 10%, indicating that the leaf length predicted by the SGE was usually smaller than the actual length. However, the predicted leaf areas approximated their actual values after considering the floating ratios in leaf length. For most datasets, the mean percent errors of leaf areas were lower than 6%, except for a pooled dataset with 42 bamboo species. For the elliptical, lanceolate, linear, obovate, and ovate shapes, although the SGE did not fit the leaf edge perfectly, after adjusting the parameter c, there were small deviations of the predicted leaf areas from the actual values. This illustrates that leaves with different shapes might have similar functional features for photosynthesis, since the leaf areas can be described by the same equation. The anisotropy expressed as a difference in leaf shape for some plants might be an adaptive response to enable them to adapt to different habitats.

2024, Revista Colombiana de Filosofía y Ciencia

Traditionally it has been argued that the inferential mechanism called inference to the best explanation (ibe) is a lethal weapon in favor of Scientific Realism (sr). Such idea has been presumably motivated by the structure assigned to the most famous argument used by sr advocates, namely the No Miracle Argument, according to which-in Putman terms-"realism is the only philosophy that does not do of the success of science a miracle". However, this paper aims to demonstrate that it is perfectly possible to apply an IBE that leads to a scientific anti-realist conclusion with the simple expedient of modifying certain metaphysical assumptions that are at the base of the argument.

2024, Probabilistic and Causal Inference

We, and scientific practice, tend to conceive of causation as an objective relation characterizing the external world. Philosophy has been more ambiguous. This chapter intends to renew the doubts. If causation is only a model-relative notion and if causation is tightly entangled with notions that are best understood in a subject-relative way, then the objectivity of causation is at least undermined. The paper discusses these doubts and concludes that the objectivity of causation must not be presupposed, but must be constructively earned.

2024

The paper explains enumerative induction, the confirmation of a law by its positive instances, in ranking theoretic terms. It gives a ranking theoretic explication of a possible law or a nomological hypothesis. And it shows, finally, that such schemes of enumerative induction uniquely correspond to mixtures of such nomological hypotheses. Thus the paper shows that de Finettl's probabilistic representation theorems may be directly transformed into an account of confirmation of possible laws and that enumerative induction is equivalent to such an account.

2024

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

2024, Symmetry

Many plant leaves exhibit bilateral symmetry, but such symmetry has rarely been measured because of the lack of practical methods. We propose a simple method for achieving the above objective. A leaf is divided into left and right sides, and several equally-sized strips are generated to intersect each side of that leaf to generate pairwise left and right sub-regions. A standardized index (SI) for measuring bilateral symmetry is built based on the left-right areal differences of those sub-regions. The leaves of 10 species of plants were sampled for testing the method's validity. Based on the experimental data, we compared the root-mean-squared error (RMSE), SI, and areal ratio (AR) of the left side to the right side of the leaf. The SI measures the bilateral symmetry of plant leaves well, and it is better than the RMSE and AR for eliminating the effect of leaf size on the goodness of fit. The SI proposed here is the best indicator for evaluating the degree of bilateral symmetry and can be potentially used for comparing the difference in the bilateral symmetry of leaves of different plants.

2024, Norsk filosofisk tidsskrift

I denne artikkelen forsøker jeg å åpne opp for den mulighet at Jesu oppstandelse ikke vil innebaere et brudd med verken naturlover eller vitenskapelig tenkemåte. Religionskritikere har ofte funnet inspirasjon i David Humes berømte kritikk av mirakeltroen, og spesielt har hans argument om brudd på naturlover blitt benyttet. I den foreliggende artikkelen gir jeg en kritikk av dette argumentet, og konkluderer med at det ikke er et godt argument. Troen på Jesu oppstandelse spiller en sentral rolle i kristendommen. At det forholder seg slik kan lett begrunnes ved å henvise til bibelske tekster. Apostelen Peter skriver at alle troende har en uforgjengelig arv som venter på dem i himmelen, og at denne er gjort tilgjengelig for de troende gjennom Jesu oppstandelse fra de døde. Apostelen Paulus sier rett ut at om Jesus ikke sto opp fra de døde, er den kristne tro intet. På denne bakgrunnen er det litt overraskende at flere av Jesu disipler møtte oppstandelsesbudskapet med tvil og skepsis. Mest kjent er nok Thomas, men han er ikke den eneste. I Markusevangeliet fortelles det at "da de hørte at han levde og var blitt sett av henne (Maria Magdalena), trodde de det ikke" (Mark 16,11). To vers senere får vi høre om to andre disipler som "var på vei ut på landet, men heller ikke dem ville tro" (16,13). Så fortelles det at Jesus "viste seg for de elleve mens de satt til bords. Og han irettesatte dem for deres vantro og deres harde hjerte, fordi de ikke hadde trodd dem som hadde sett Ham etter at Han var oppstått." (Mark 16,14) Tvilen på at Jesus faktisk sto opp fra de døde synes å ligge dypt, og vi har ingen problemer med å brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk

2023, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Indigenous peoples are resilient peoples with deep traditional knowledge and scientific thought spanning millennia. Global discourse on climate change however has identified Indigenous populations as being a highly vulnerable group due to the habitation in regions undergoing rapid change, and the disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality already faced by this population. Therefore, the need for Indigenous self-determination and the formal recognition of Indigenous knowledges, including micro-level molecular and microbial knowledges, as a critical foundation for planetary health is in urgent need. Through the process of Indigenous decolonization, even at the smallest molecular scale, we define a method back to our original selves and therefore to our planetary origin story. Our health and well-being is directly reflected at the planetary scale, and we suggest, can be rooted through the concept of molecular decolonization, which through the English language emerged from the ‘...

2023, Zygon

The recently suggested reformulation of Darwinian evolutionary theory, based on the thermodynamics of selforganizing processes, has strong philosophical implications. My claim is that the main philosophical merit of the thermodynamic approach, made especially clear in J.S. Wicken's work, is its insistence on the law-governed, Eontinuous nature of evolution. I attempt to substantiate this claim following a historical analysis of beginning-of-the-century ideas on evolution and matter-life relationship, in particular, the fitness-of-the-environment-for-life theory of the Harvard physiologist L. J. Henderson. In addition, I point to an epistemological common ground underlying the studies of the "thermodynamics school" and other currently active research groups focusing on the emergence and evolution of biological organization.

2023, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly

A novel motivation for a Humean projectivist construal of our concept of scientific law is provided. The analysis is partially developed and used to explain intuitions that are problematic for a Humean reductionist construal of lawhood. A possible non-Humean rejoinder is discussed and rejected. In an appendix, further intuitions that are problematic for Humean reductionists are explained projectively.

2023, Ecology and Evolution

The size and shape of plant leaves change with growth, and an accurate description of leaf shape is crucial for describing plant morphogenesis and development. Bilateral symmetry, which has been widely observed but poorly examined, occurs in both dicot and monocot leaves, including all nominated bamboo species (approximately 1,300 species), of which at least 500 are found in China. Although there are apparent differences in leaf size among bamboo species due to genetic and environmental profiles, bamboo leaves have bilateral symmetry with parallel venation and appear similar across species. Here, we investigate whether the shape of bamboo leaves can be accurately described by a simplified Gielis equation, which consists of only two parameters (leaf length and shape) and produces a perfect bilateral shape. To test the applicability of this equation and the occurrence of bilateral symmetry, we first measured the leaf length of 42 bamboo species, examining >500 leaves per species. We then scanned 30 leaves per species that had approximately the same length as the median leaf length for that species. The leaf-shape data from scanned profiles were fitted to the simplified Gielis equation. Results confirmed that the equation fits the leaf-shape data extremely well, with the coefficients of determination being 0.995 on average. We further demonstrated the bilateral symmetry of bamboo leaves, with a clearly defined leaf-shape parameter of all 42 bamboo species investigated ranging from 0.02 to 0.1. This results in a simple and reliable tool for precise determination of bamboo species, with applications in forestry, ecology, and taxonomy.

2023, Newsletter der ÖGPP N° 82 (containing link)

Von ca. 100 katholischen Heiligen wird berichtet, daß sie emporgehoben worden sind, an erster Stelle steht der hl. Joseph von Copertino. Das Phänomen hat sich auch auf Personen erstreckt, die sie berührt haben. -- Parapsychologische Medien, von denen Levitationen berichtet werden, sind z.B. D.D. Home, Indridi Indridason, Rudi Schneider u.a.
English Abstract:
Levitation of catholic saints (particularly St. Joseph of Copertino, however, a total of 100 approx) compared to levitation of 'physical mediums'' in parapsychology, e.g. D.D. Home, Indridi Indridason, Rudi Schneider. The focus is on the fact that the phenomenon included objects and even persons that were in contact with the saint or medium (Indridi Indridason lifted together with the chair he was sitting on, St. Joseph taking other persons he grabbed with him into the air). It appears not only the levitating individual is affected, rather there develops kind of 'field' where (hitherto unknown) forces act, overruling the known physical ones (equivalent to the lift generated on an airfoil according Bernoulli's law overrules gravity).

2023, Philosophical Studies

My primary focus in this paper is on an objection to Humean account of laws and specifically to David Lewis' "best systems analysis" (BSA). The objection is that the laws according to the BSA (which I call L-laws) fail to account for the ability of laws to explain. In contrast governing laws (which I will call G-laws) are alleged to account for the role of laws in scientific explanations by virtue of their governing role. If governing is required for laws to be explanatory then Humean accounts like Lewis' are dead in the water since explanation is central to the role of laws in the sciences. However, I will argue that there are effective rebuttals to arguments that Humean laws don't explain and that actually it is governing accounts that have difficulty with explanation.

2022, Philosophical Studies

2022, Journal of Philosophical Economics

The conception of the founder of the Austrian School in his book on the philosophy of social sciences has been described by the supporters of this school as a total methodological individualism, upholding the absolute specificity of these sciences to those of nature, and as rejecting the use of mathematics in economics.
On the contrary, we shall see that for Carl Menger the human individual was only the fundamental element of socio-economic structures, not reducible to it. Economic theory was to be inspired by the ‘atomism’ of natural sciences and determine the causes, effects, and laws of the studied phenomena, with the aim of predicting and controlling them. Empirical study had to unite with conceptual abstraction and mathematics in the degree determined by the simplicity or complexity of the field of research.
These characteristics of C. Manger’s conception, like others, make us assume an important (but unconfessed) influence of A. Comte's positivism. However, in order to prove it, we will try to restore his true philosophy of science, warped by the neo-positivism of the energeticist scientists and of the Vienna Circle.
I believe that the real meaning of ideas can only be understood by placing them in their most complete contexts. So, I sought to give a concentrated but faithfully structured picture of the systems of philosophy of science.

2022, Challenges

2022

The purpose of the reading is to shed light on Novalis (1772-1801), one of the most important figures of German Romanticism. The convocation of his work for the critical analysis of microeconomics is useful in several points in a world where people feel betrayed by the modernist project without alternative horizon. According to Novalis, nature is not substance, it is force through a combinatorial game. It is an open system that does not obey a law to which humans must conform, as is the case in microeconomics for the so-called market law.

2022, Areté

Resumen: La disputa entre realistas y antirrealistas nomológicos se ha plasmado en la formulación de diversos argumentos y contraargumentos que alcanzan tópicos tan heterogéneos como la modalidad, la inducción y la misma práctica científica. En ese marco es frecuente tomar al principal argumento realista, el llamado argumento nomológico, por una instancia de la inferencia a la mejor explicación, mientras que el antirrealismo nomológico se considera una alternativa escéptica respecto de las leyes naturales fundamentada por razones independientes. El presente trabajo propone revisar esa imagen del debate realismo vs. antirrealismo nomológicos a la luz de lo que, consideramos, es una adecuada distinción entre abducción e inferencia a la mejor explicación. Palabras clave: realismo nomológico; leyes naturales; leyes científicas; inferencia a la mejor explicación; abducción Abstract: "The Nomological Realism vs. Antirealism Debate and the Inference to the Best Explanation". The dispute between nomological realists and anti-realists has been reflected in the formulation of various arguments and counterarguments that reach topics as diverse as modality, induction and the very scientific practice. In this context it is common to take the main realist argument-the nomological argument-for an instance of Inference to the Best Explanation, while Nomological Anti-realism is considered a skeptical alternative concerning natural laws, sustained by independent reasons. This paper aims to review that image of the Nomological Realism vs. Anti-realism debate in light of what we believe is an appropriate distinction between abduction and Inference to the Best Explanation.

2022

This article is about ontology. It was stated that properties (relation) are fundamental constituents of reality. There are at least three different theories about the nature of properties: properties as perfect particulars - Bergmann, properties as abstract particulars — trope theory, and properties as universals. The universal theory was defended against different objections. The results of this procedure was used in the case of structural universals against theses: (a) they are just a mereological composition of theirs constituent universals (parts); (b) they are simple (unstructured) properties of individuals — magic as an alternative. Relational theory of structural universals with three metaphysical levels (material individuals; properties and relations of these individuals; properties and relations which hold between properties or relations of individuals - with internal relations of proportion holding between properties and relations of universals) was proposed as the soluti...

2022

This is my reading material for the 5th annual formal epistemology workshop at UW Madison, May 14-18, 2008. I shall try to condense the essentials of this material into a 45 minutes talk. Here, however, I would like to present my full material that mainly consists of chapter 12 of my book on ranking theory that I am about to write. The chapter is not self-contained and requires at least an introduction into ranking theory. For this reason I have prefixed such an introduction that I have taken from another paper of mine. All in all, that makes for a somewhat uneven reading, but the text should be complete as far as it goes. It also makes for an uneven numbering, which I have only slightly adapted. So, please keep in mind that this is a mixture of two texts, each with its own introduction. You may skip section 12.6, and you need not read all the details and proofs of section 12.5.

2022

M e gustaría agradecer a Bill Newton-Smith, Pe- ter Lipton, Elizabeth Okasha, Líz Richardson y Shelley Cox la lectura y los comentarios de las versiones preliminares de este material. i. ¿QUÉ ES LA CIENCIA? ¿ /~\ué es la ciencia? Esta pregunta parece fácil de V^responder: todos saben que materias como la física, la química y la biología son ciencia, mientras que disciplinas como el arte, la música y la teología no lo son. Pero cuando, como filósofos, preguntamos qué es la ciencia, ésta no es la clase de respuesta que buscamos. No preguntamos por una simple lista de las actividades englobadas dentro del término "ciencia". Más bien busca mos el rasgo que comparten todas las materias listadas; es decir, qué es lo que hace de algo una ciencia. Entendida de esta manera, la pregunta no es tan trivial. Aun así, podría seguirse pensando que la pregunta es sencilla. ¿De verdad es la ciencia el intento de com prender, explicar y predecir el mundo en que vivimos? Ciertamente, ésta es una respuesta razonable. Sin embar go, ¿aquí termina la historia? Después de todo, las diver sas religiones también pretenden comprender y explicar el mundo, si bien la religión no se considera una rama de la ciencia. De manera similar, la astrología y la adivi nación son intentos de predecir el futuro, pero la gente no describiría estas actividades como ciencia. O consi dérese la historia. Los historiadores tratan de entender y explicar lo que ocurrió en el pasado, aunque la historia suele clasificarse como un arte y no como una ciencia. FILOSOFÍA DE LA CIENCIA F¡ del mítico experimento de Galileo sobre la velocidad de los objetos arrojados desde la Torre inclinada de Pisa. FILOSOFÍA DE LA CIENCIA £t SEROR BERQÍÍ AI RESCATO Et defraudada yonle -. Es© Sdfjifrn* rectan]^ ser parte de oit ísritfie Oiee Tus es uíio de mis des-, brujientes El seflor Sergh V bien, seflor Daf\vwi, ocSroo (Mdo iiwiilíarli' de esa manera?

2022, Erkenntnis

This paper shows how a particular resiliency-centered approach to chance lends support for two conditions characterizing chance. The first condition says that the present chance of some proposition A conditional on the proposition about some later chance of A should be set equal to that later chance of A. The second condition requires the present chance of some proposition A to be equal to the weighted average of possible later chances of A. I first introduce, motivate, and make precise a resiliency-centered approach to chance whose basic idea is that any chance distribution should be maximally invariant under variation of experimental factors. Second, I show that any present chance distribution that violates the two conditions can be replaced by another present chance distribution that satisfies them and is more resilient under variation of experimental factors. This shows that the two conditions are an essential feature of chances that maximize resiliency. Finally, I explore the relationship between the idea of resilient chances so understood and socalled Humean accounts of chance-one of the most promising recent philosophical accounts of chance.

2022

J. Ladyman (1998-2009), Ladyman and Ross (2007) refine J. Worral's (1998) structural realism (SR), by developing an ontic structural realism (OSR) which they argue is a consistently naturalistic means of characterizing the ontology of fundamental physics. I argue that particular elements of M. Lange (2009) and M. Eklund (2006) strengthen and refine their project of characterizing fundamental physics via OSR and by extension, their presentation of information-theoretic structural realism (ITSR). I demonstrate this point by situating M. Lange’s (2009) discussion of nomological modality and natural necessity within Ladyman and Ross’s discussion of ITSR. The logical hierarchy evinced in Lange’s (2009) notion of ‘nomic stability’ further refines Ladyman and Ross’s claims through the addition of nuanced modal distinctions in a systematic framework. Moreover, I argue that what Lange considers are the ‘lawmakers’ (viz. subjunctive facts) serve as a de dicto rendition of some of Ladyman ...

2022, Challenges

2022, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

2022

In this paper, we analyse actual causation in terms of production. The latter concept is made precise by a strengthened Ramsey Test semantics of conditionals: A C iff, after suspending judgement about A and C, C is believed in the course of assuming A. This test allows us to (epistemically) verify or falsify that an event brings about another event. Complementing the concept of production by a weak condition of difference-making gives rise to a full-fledged analysis of causation.

2022, The Lancet Planetary Health

2022

I propose an argument for the thesis that laws of nature are necessary in a metaphysical sense, on the basis of a principle I propose to call the Causal Criterion of Reality (CCR). The CCR says: for an entity to be real it is necessary and sufficient that it is capable to make a difference to causal interactions. The crucial idea is that the capacity to interact causally - or to contribute to determining causal interactions - is not only the ultimate justification for the existence of an entity, but it also provides a criterion for determining the nature of that entity, i.e. its properties. The alternative is to conceive of laws of nature as contingent: they could be different from what they are like in the actual world, where that possibility is understood to be metaphysical, not only epistemic. For the sake of this paper, I shall accept Armstrong's (1983; 1997) thesis that laws of nature are relations between universals. I also follow Armstrong in the view that both the existe...

2022, Synthese Library

Metaphysics should follow science in postulating laws alongside properties. I defend this claim against the claim that natural properties conceived as powers make laws of nature redundant. Natural properties can be construed in a "thin" or a "thick" way. If one attributes a property in the thin sense to an object, this attribution does not conceptually determine which other properties the object possesses. The thin construal is underlying the scientific strategy for understanding nature piecemeal. Science explains phenomena by cutting reality conceptually in properties attributed to spacetime points, where these properties are conceived of independently of each other, to explore then, in a separate step, how the properties are related to each other; those determination relations between properties are laws. This is compatible with the thesis that laws are metaphysically necessary. According to the thick conception, a property contains all its dependency relations to other properties. The dependency relationships between properties (which appear as laws in the thin conception) are parts of the properties they relate. There are several reasons to resist the thick conception of properties. It makes simple properties "holistic", in the sense that each property contains many other properties as parts. It cannot account for the fact that properties constrain each other's identity; it can neither explain why natural properties are linked to a unique set of dispositions, nor why and how this set is structured nor why the truth-maker of many disposition attributions is relational although the disposition is grounded on a monadic property.

2022, Argument und Analyse

2022, Challenges

2022, Australasian Journal of Philosophy

A dispositional property is a tendency, or potency, to manifest some characteristic behaviour in some appropriate context. The mainstream view in the 20th Century was that such properties are to be explained in terms of more fundamental non-dispositional properties, together with the laws of nature. In the last few decades, however, a rival view has become popular. According to the rival view, some properties are essentially dispositional in nature, and the laws of nature are to be explained in terms of these fundamental dispositions. The supposed ability of fundamental dispositions to ground natural laws is one of the most attractive features of the dispositional essentialist position. In this paper, however, I cast doubt on the ability of dispositional essences to ground the laws of nature. In particular I argue that the dispositional essentialist position is not able to coherently respond-sympathetically or otherwise-to Cartwright's challenge that there are no true general laws of nature.

2022, Challenges

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2022, Pharmaceutical patent analyst

In 2010, the biotechnology and molecular diagnostics industries were shocked by the decision from a US District Court to the effect that isolated endogenous DNA and diagnostic tests based on newly discovered DNA sequences were not eligible for US patents. The case related to the BRCA1/2 genes for breast and ovarian cancer. On appeal, the decision was almost entirely overturned. However, in March 2012, the US Supreme Court vacated the appeal court decision and instructed the appeals court to rehear the case in the light of its very recent decision, which suggested that products of nature and their obvious uses should not be patentable. This commentary explores the points at issue.

2022

The complexity we observe in life forms, in their development and in biological evolution, is the result of the temporal and spatial constraints of a long evolutionary history made up of relations accumulating in time. This work assumes that space and time belong to different logical types: the fi rst being reversible and conservative and the second irreversible and evolutionary. Time and space are reciprocally irreducible quantities. We refer to the thermodynamics of the Nobel laureate in Chemistry, Ilya Prigogine, to perform a new point of view of life, in terms of evolutionary thermodynamics.

2022

This paper is the most complete presentation of my views on deterministic causation. It develops the deterministic theory in perfect parallel to my theory of probabilistic causation and thus unites the two aspects. It also argues that the... more

2022

Se argumenta que la actitud epistémica (el ethos o stance) del realista científico - i.e., la búsqueda de explicaciones aun conjeturando inobservables, el querer minimizar el universo de los hechos brutos- es incompatible con aquella de un emergentismo fuerte u ontológico que se resigna a dejar como inexplicados y como inexplicables algunos fenómenos de emergencia, por lo que el realismo científico no es compatible con este tipo de emergentismo, uno resignado a la ignorancia. También se argumenta que la actitud realista es la preferible para la investigación científica, pues el realista científico apuesta por seguir investigando, por seguir perquiriendo.

2022, Synthese

This paper develops an account of the metaphysics of fundamental laws I call "the Package Deal Account (PDA)" that is a descendent of Lewis' BSA but differs from it in a number of significant ways. It also rejects some elements of the metaphysics in which Lewis develops his BSA. First, Lewis proposed a metaphysical thesis about fundamental properties he calls "Humean Supervenience" (HS) according to which all fundamental properties are instantiated by points or point sized individuals and the only fundamental relations are geometrical spatial and temporal relations between these. While the BSA does not require HS Lewis seems to hope that it is true. In contrast, the PDA is not committed to HS or even to the fundamental arena in which fundamental properties are instantiated possessing geometrical structure and thus is able to accommodate relations and structures found in contemporary physics that apparently conflict with HS. Second, although Lewis' BSA doesn't require HS his Humeanism does require that fundamental properties are categorical. In contrast, the PDA allows for the possibility that fundamental properties are individuated in terms of laws and so are not categorical. Third, the PDA expands and develops the criteria for what counts in favor of a candidate system with more attention to the criteria employed by physicists in evaluating proposed theories. Fourth and most importantly, unlike Lewis' BSA, the PDA does not presuppose metaphysically primitive elite properties/quantities that Lewis calls "perfectly natural" properties/quantities or presuppose a metaphysically preferred language whose terms denote such properties/quantities. It replaces Lewis' account with an account on which natural properties are not metaphysically prior to the laws but are elements of a package that includes a fundamental arena that plays the role of space-time as well as fundamental laws and properties. By doing so it responds to some epistemological and metaphysical issues that have been raised regarding natural properties and their role in the BSA. In sum, the PDA goes further in explicating the notion of laws in terms of the aims and practices of science especially fundamental physics rather than in terms of prior metaphysics. I begin by reviewing Lewis' account of perfectly natural properties and his Humean BSA of laws.

2022, Forests

2022, The Lancet Planetary Health

Indigenous Peoples have resiliently weathered continued assaults on their sovereignty and rights throughout colonialism and its continuing effects. Indigenous Peoples’ sovereignty has been strained by the increasing effects of global environmental change within their territories, including climate change and pollution, and by threats and impositions against their land and water rights. This continuing strain against sovereignty has prompted a call to action to conceptualise the determinants of planetary health from a perspective that embodied Indigenous-specific methods of knowledge gathering from around the globe. A group of Indigenous scholars, practitioners, land and water defenders, respected Elders, and knowledge-holders came together to define the determinants of planetary health from an Indigenous perspective. Three overarching levels of interconnected determinants, in addition to ten individual-level determinants, were identified as being integral to the health and sustainability of the planet, Mother Earth.

2022

1. NOMOLOGICAL NECESSITY Consider the anti-Humeans’ claim that for ∀x(Fx→Gx) to be a law (or to be backed up by a law) there has to be a certain Must that is operating: Fs have to bring about or produce or necessitate Gs. Armstrong's version of this claim is to invoke nomological necessity, a relation that is supposed to hold between the two universals F and G—Nnom(F, G)—and, therefore, makes it the case that each instantiation of F is, or brings about, a G-instantiation. Nomological necessity is meant to be a this-worldly, immanent relation that does not extend to other possible worlds: per se, the Must of nomological necessity, Nnom(F, G), does not bring "truth in all possible worlds" with it. It is rather to be thought of as something like a force operating here and now. In the lack of a better neutral technical term let’s call it an oomph. Whether oomphs are to be found in other worlds and, if so, are linking the same properties as they do actually is open for disc...

2022

The Belgian chemical physicist Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003) has been an early proponent of complex systems approaches (Nicolis & Prigogine 1977). As such, he has often been presented as an opponent to physicalist reductionism. A critical examination of his scientific work shows nevertheless an ambiguous relation to reductionism. Moreover, this relation deeply changed over his career, allowing to distinguish between two Prigogine. The “first Prigogine” (1940s – mid-1970s) tried to reactivate Pierre Duhem’s dream of a “generalized thermodynamics,” an autonomous and phenomenological theory unifying the entire field of the macroscopic phenomena. The “second Prigogine” (starting from mid-1970s) engaged in an alternative microscopic dynamics, departing from the standard statistical mechanics, in order to deduce the laws of thermodynamics from a microscopic theory. However, Prigogine did not underline this change of viewpoint, blurring the meaning of his work in the second part of his career...