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Laws of Nature [addendum]

Since David M. Armstrong's entry was first published in 1996, the philosophical debates he identifies have evolved in minor ways. There is still the central debate between the Humeans (the regularity theorists) and the anti-Humeans (the proponents of strong laws), and there are still those who choose to deny that there are any laws, to be eliminativists, rather than engage in the central debate. This addendum indicates how the literature has shifted focus to questions surrounding supervenience and whether laws govern. It also engages in a fuller discussion of the relationship between laws of nature and epis-temological issues, including the role of laws in induc-tive inference and some skeptical challenges for both Humeans and anti-Humeans.

Supervenience

The persevering Humean theory of laws is the systematic approach made popular by David Lewis and described briefly by Armstrong. (Versions of this account are also defended in Earman [1984] and in Loewer [1996].) A feature of this view prized by its supporters is its consistency with Humean supervenience, a thesis formulated various ways (see Earman and Roberts, 2005, Part I) but that basically maintains that the most fundamental nonmodal features of a universe fix everything else about it, including what its laws of nature are.

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