Counterfactuals and Humean Reduction

Abstract

This chapter comprises an exposition and critique of David Lewis’s metaphysical thesis of Humean supervenience and the reductive account of counterfactuals and other concepts in the natural necessity family that is given in this framework. Hume’s rejection of primitive natural necessity was grounded in his empiricist epistemology, but Lewis’s Humean metaphysics involves a radical separation of metaphysical and epistemological principles, and it is argued in this chapter that his metaphysics is unmotivated, and requires an implausible conception of the nature of fundamental natural properties. The chapter defends an alternative picture that picks up on a different more naturalistic Humean theme, tying the cluster of concepts that involve natural necessity to their role in an explanation of inductive practice.