Human Law Research Articles

Correction to: Are non-accidental regularities a cosmic coincidence? Revisiting a central threat to Humean laws

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Humean laws and explanation

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.

Humeans are out of this world

I defend the following argument in this paper. Premise 1: Laws of nature are intrinsic to the universe. Premise 2: Humeanism maintains that laws of nature are extrinsic to the universe. Conclusion: Humeanism is false. This argument is inspired by Hawthorne’s (Nous 38(2):351–358, 2004) argument in “Humeans are out of their Minds”. My argument differs from his; Hawthorne focuses on Humean views of causation and how they interact with judgments about consciousness. He thinks Humeans are forced to treat certain mental properties (insofar as they involve causal features) as extrinsic to conscious minds. I do not discuss causation or consciousness here. I focus on Humean accounts of laws. I argue that Humean laws are extrinsic to the entire universe. As such, Humeans are not just out of their minds; they are out of this world. I aim to show that premises 1 and 2 are well-supported and that denying either of them comes at a cost. Nevertheless, some Humeans may prefer to reject 1 or 2 rather than give up Humeanism. Even if the Humean takes one of these routes, the argument above has philosophical import: it shows that Humeanism involves surprising commitments.

Are non-accidental regularities a cosmic coincidence? Revisiting a central threat to Humean laws

If the laws of nature are as the Humean believes, it is an unexplained cosmic coincidence that the actual Humean mosaic is as extremely regular as it is. This is a strong and well-known objection to the Humean account of laws. Yet, as reasonable as this objection may seem, it is nowadays sometimes dismissed. The reason: its unjustified implicit assignment of equiprobability to each possible Humean mosaic; that is, its assumption of the principle of indifference, which has been attacked on many grounds ever since it was first proposed. In place of equiprobability, recent formal models represent the doxastic state of total ignorance as suspension of judgment. In this paper I revisit the cosmic coincidence objection to Humean laws by assessing which doxastic state we should endorse. By focusing on specific features of our scenario I conclude that suspending judgment results in an unnecessarily weak doxastic state. First, I point out that recent literature in epistemology has provided independent justifications of the principle of indifference. Second, given that the argument is framed within a Humean metaphysics, it turns out that we are warranted to appeal to these justifications and assign a uniform and additive credence distribution among Humean mosaics. This leads us to conclude that, contrary to widespread opinion, we should not dismiss the cosmic coincidence objection to the Humean account of laws.

What Humeans should say about tied best systems

AbstractThe Humean best systems account (BSA) identifies laws of nature with the regularities in a system of truths that, as a whole, best conforms to scientific standards for theory-choice. A principled problem for the BSA is that it returns the wrong verdicts about laws in cases where multiple systems, containing different regularities, satisfy these standards equally well. This problem affects every version of the BSA because it arises regardless of which standards for theory-choice Humeans adopt. In this paper, we propose a Humean response to the problem. We invoke pragmatic aspects of Humean laws to show that the BSA, despite violating some of our intuitive judgements, can capture everything that is relevant for scientific practice.

Humean Laws and (Nested) Counterfactuals

AbstractHumean reductionism about laws of nature is the view that the laws reduce to the total distribution of non-modal or categorical properties in spacetime. A worry about Humean reductionism is that it cannot motivate the characteristic modal resilience of laws under counterfactual suppositions and that it thus generates wrong verdicts about certain nested counterfactuals. In this paper, we defend Humean reductionism by motivating an account of the modal resilience of Humean laws that gets nested counterfactuals right.

The Plasticity of the Human and Inscribing History within Biology: A Response to Donald J. Munro

The Plasticity of the Human and Inscribing History within Biology:A Response to Donald J. Munro Sonya N. Özbey (bio) Donald J. Munro's essay, "When Science Is in Defense of Value-Linked Facts," takes a stand against the fact-value dichotomy which has been heavily pronounced within the Greco-European philosophical canon. As Munro also points out, the continuing persistence of the fact-value dichotomy is traceable to Moore's discussion of the "naturalistic fallacy" (which claims that we cannot derive what is "good" from what is "pleasant") and Hume's discussion of the is-ought problem (which states that we cannot move from "descriptive" statements to "prescriptive" ones). In opposition to these two views, classical Confucian thinkers present us with descriptive statements about human commonalities, including their inborn affects. These affects are also morally relevant, because especially within the Mencian tradition they serve as the basis for various morally significant virtues, such as benevolence (ren 仁) and righteousness (yi 義). It is this moral system that Munro defends as a more convincing alternative to the dominant approaches in Western moral philosophy. Munro in his essay discusses the interrelations between values, affects (or emotions), and facts and demonstrates that various affects that humans share in common are factually observable and that they inform various moral values. Among these affects, Munro focuses on contentment and tranquility (which embody the values of health and well-being), love and care (which embody the value of human bonding) and, finally, shame and respect (which embody the values of cooperation, harmony, and adaptation to hierarchy). Munro engages with a variety of scientific fields, ranging from primatology to neurobiology, to demonstrate that these value-laden affects are measurable and observable in humans and (in different degrees) in other animals. As Munro demonstrates throughout his essay, people's affective tendencies are emphasized to a considerable degree within the Confucian discourse, while they are relatively underappreciated within the Greco-European philosophical canon. This is not a coincidence, because, as Judith Butler, among others, has noted, when we see binaries operating within a philosophical system, what we see is not simply binaries and oppositions co-existing without dominating over each other. Oppositions often get formulated at the expense of the exclusion and suppression of one side of the binary (mind over matter, reason over affect, and so on).1 This also means that when Mencius, let us say, famously says that the laws or patterns of the world please his heart the [End Page 918] way certain foods please his mouth,2 he is not simply privileging affect over reason or vice versa (which would presuppose their initial separateness). Instead, reason itself becomes affective, and ethics gets intertwined with matters of taste and beauty. This is what Munro wonderfully terms the "clustering" of the emotional and the cognitive factors. That various philosophical dichotomies, including the reason-affect and fact-value dichotomies, are shaped by the cultural milieu in which they are produced seems undeniable. The fact that there is an entire philosophical tradition that is not built on a radical articulation of the fact-value dichotomy should provide us with enough motivation to at least question the validity of this very dualism. Moreover, one could also follow the lead of Munro and point to the evidence of the hard sciences, which provide further support for a moral system that relies on observations about humans' shared characteristics. This is certainly not to say, however, that such a moral system is without its critical pitfalls. In my response to Munro's essay, I would like to lay out several other criticisms that one might raise against theories of human nature and the very project of grounding various values in biological foundations. After this brief exegetical overview, which will also involve a discussion of how Munro's essay implicitly or explicitly addresses these challenges, I will attempt to chart new directions that this study may facilitate. This includes a suggestion to repurpose Confucian accounts of personhood to help us generate alternative formulations of human agency and action, followed by a general reflection on the variety of ways we could draw inspiration from the classical Confucian canon. Tying Morality to a Theory of Human...

Biologists' Consensus on 'When Life Begins'

Many Americans disagree on ‘When does a human’s life begin?’ because the question is subject to interpretive ambiguity arising from Hume’s is-ought problem. There are two distinct interpretations of the question: descriptive (i.e., ‘When is a fetus classified as a human?’) and normative (i.e., ‘When ought a fetus be worthy of ethical and legal consideration?’). To determine if one view is more prevalent today, 2,899 American adults were surveyed and asked to select the group most qualified to answer the question of when a human’s life begins. The majority selected biologists (81%), which suggested Americans primarily hold a descriptive view. Indeed, the majority justified their selection by describing biologists as objective scientists that can use their biological expertise to determine when a human's life begins. Academic biologists were recruited to participate in a study on their descriptive view of when life begins. A sample of 5,502 biologists from 1,058 academic institutions assessed statements representing the biological view ‘a human’s life begins at fertilization’. This view was used because previous polls and surveys suggest many Americans and medical experts hold this view. Each of the three statements representing that view was affirmed by a consensus of biologists (75-91%). The participants were separated into 60 groups and each statement was affirmed by a consensus of each group, including biologists that identified as very pro-choice (69-90%), very pro-life (92-97%), very liberal (70-91%), very conservative (94-96%), strong Democrats (74-91%), and strong Republicans (89-94%). Overall, 95% of all biologists affirmed the biological view that a human's life begins at fertilization (5212 out of 5502). Historically, the descriptive view on when life begins has dictated the normative view that drives America's abortion laws: (1) abortion was illegal at ‘quickening’ under 18th century common law, (2) abortion was illegal at ‘conception’ in state laws from the late 1800’s to the mid-1900’s, and (3) abortion is currently legal before ‘viability’ due to 20th century U.S. Supreme Court cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. While this article’s findings suggest a fetus is biologically classified as a human at fertilization, this descriptive view does not entail the normative view that fetuses deserve legal consideration throughout pregnancy. Contemporary ethical and legal concepts that motivate reproductive rights might cause Americans to disregard the descriptive view or disentangle it from the normative view. However, these findings can help Americans move past the factual dispute on when life begins and focus on the operative question of when a fetus deserves legal consideration.

Humean laws, explanatory circularity, and the aim of scientific explanation

One of the main challenges confronting Humean accounts of natural law is that Humean laws appear to be unable to play the explanatory role of laws in scientific practice. The worry is roughly that if the laws are just regularities in the particular matters of fact (as the Humean would have it), then they cannot also explain the particular matters of fact, on pain of circularity. Loewer (Philoso Stud 160:115–137, 2012) has defended Humeanism, arguing that this worry only arises if we fail to distinguish between scientific and metaphysical explanations. However, Lange (Philoso Stud 165:255–261, 2013, Synthese 195:1337–1353, 2018) has argued that scientific and metaphysical explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which would undercut Loewer’s defense and re-ignite the circularity worry for the Humean. I argue here that the Humean has antecedent reasons to doubt that there are any systematic connections between scientific and metaphysical explanations. The reason is that the Humean should think that scientific and metaphysical explanation have disparate aims, and therefore that neither form of explanation is beholden to the other in its pronouncements about what explains what. Consequently, the Humean has every reason to doubt that Lange’s transitivity principle obtains.

Laying Down Hume's Law

AbstractMost interpretations of Hume's is/ought passage (THN 3.1.1.27) can be broadly divided into two camps: those thinking Hume to rule out logical inferences from is to ought, and those thinking Hume to only raise surmountable difficulties for inferences from is to ought. I undermine the positive support for both these interpretations, and argue, by drawing parallels with Hume's argument on induction, that Hume's Law instead rules out all forms of inference from is to ought.

Laws and their instances

I present an argument for the view that laws ground their instances. I then outline two important consequences that follow if we accept the conclusion of this argument. First, the claim that laws ground their instances threatens to undermine a prominent recent attempt to make sense of the explanatory power of Humean laws by distinguishing between metaphysical and scientific explanation. And second, the claim that laws ground their instances gives rise to a novel argument against the view that grounding relations are metaphysically necessary.

Byzantine Legislation on the Possibility for a Slave to Become a Monk

Byzantium retained the institute of slavery despite being a Christian state. Christian ideology was to come into a confrontation with social reality, but in fact both coexisted peacefully in many spheres. This paper aims to demonstrate the ways along which the integration of the social phenomenon of slavery with the religious institute of monasticism took place, i.e. how this process is reflected in laic and ecclesiastic law, as well as canonistics. Did the humanisation and mitigation of law occur over time? Was there any difference between the approaches of laic and ecclesiastical law, and canonistics? The article considers the question of slaves’ integration into monkhood in the context of the entire Byzantine millennium. The research is based on documents of civil law (the law of Valentinian III, the constitutions included in the Codex Justinianus , Justinian’s Novels , the Ecloga , Basilika , and Leo VI’s Novels ), ecclesiastical law (the Canons of the Councils of Gangra and Chalcedon, and the apostolic rules), secular and ecclesiastical law (the Nomokanon in 14 titles), works of canonists (Zonaras, Aristenos, and Balsamon, Matthew Blastares), as well as some extracts from the Rules of Basil the Great, Pachomius, and the Life of Hypatius of Rufiniana. The article concludes that in Canon law and writings of canonists, the position of the Church is abundantly clear: a slave may not become a monk, cleric or bishop without his master’s authorisation. The canon of 451 was adopted once and for all, it did not undergo any change. It is under the terms of Justinian’s Novels that the humanisation of law can be stated. This Emperor granted all men, both slaves and free ones, the right (almost in equal measure) to follow their religious vocation. Having put on a monastic habit, a slave became conditionally free, for he was to return to his previous status when leaving his monastery.

A Universal Moral Grammar (UMG) Ontology

This paper describes an OWL ontology that is a Universal Moral Grammar (UMG). UMG has been hypothesized by students of Chomsky to play the same role in human ethics as Universal Grammar (UG) does in Linguistics. I.e., the UMG describes a moral faculty hypothesized to have a genetic basis. This approach utilizes the modular view of the mind developed by Chomsky and currently utilized by many evolutionary psychology researchers. In this paper I describe the ontology and how it represents ethical choices, rules, scenarios, and systems. This includes representation of choices governed by the golden rule, utilitarianism, and Moral Foundations Theory. The foundation for the model is an Artificial Intelligence model of events, plans, and decisions. This plan model represents what is known as Theory of Mind (TOM). The TOM model is extended to the ethical domain by an analysis of recent research in evolutionary psychology and the representation of 40 different scenarios such as the trolley problem from the philosophical, psychological, and biological literature. The ontology is an example of how semantic technology can be used to provide mathematical rigor to the study of human ethics. This version demonstrates the breadth of the UMG, that it is capable of representing many diverse examples from the literature. However, there are already meaningful results from this version such as a resolution to Hume’s Is-Ought problem.

Doing Justice to the Is-Ought Gap

Doing Justice to the Is-Ought Gap

Can Science Bridge the Is-Ought gap? A Response to Michael Shermer

In a recent article,1 Michael Shermer proposes that science can bridge David Hume’s is-ought divide.2 Applying evolutionary theory to the ultimate foundation of morality, he suggests there are thre...

Laws of Nature, Explanation, and Semantic Circularity

AbstractHumeans and anti-Humeans agree that laws of nature should explain scientifically particular matters of fact. One objection to Humean accounts of laws contends that Humean laws cannot explai...

What Kind of Is-Ought Gap is There and What Kind Ought There Be?

Some philosophers think that there is a gap between is and ought which necessarily makes normative enquiry a different kind of thing than empirical science. This position gains support from our ability to explicate our inferential practices in a way that makes it impermissible to move from descriptive premises to a normative conclusion. But we can also explicate them in a way that allows such moves. So there is no categorical answer as to whether there is or is not a gap. The question of an is-ought gap is a practical and strategic matter rather than a logical one, and it may properly be answered in different ways for different questions or at different times.

Biology, Justice and Hume’s Guillotine

Biology and Neuroscience are addressing issues related to moral sentiments, but this does not mean that Philosophy has lost its importance in the debate. Paradoxically, the discovery that moral sentiments have evolutionary origins does not overcome the problem of “Hume’s Guillotine”. There are human characteristics which can be explained by natural selection and that are nonetheless culturally reproved. In order to choose or select which “natural” characteristics are to be promoted and which are to be discouraged, it is necessary to use a criterion that is not given by nature, although human capacities to discuss these criteria have been naturally shaped.

Two Versions of Hume's Law

No abstract.

On the conceptual discontinuity between moral normativity and factuality: a reply to Brito

Brito (2010) proposes a naturalistic analysis of morality, disagreeing with some authors who postulate an insurmountable is-ought gap. Here, we present his main arguments and advance some criticisms to them. Brito’s strategy consists in grounding the normative notion of ought on volitive notions, like “will” and “want”. In his perspective, to reach the moral level, a will has to be directed to itself and to all other wills. We try to show that this strategy fails, since moral normativity cannot be grounded on subjective phenomena, regardless of the contents of these phenomena. We also show some incoherence in Brito’s ideias about the possibility of is-ought reduction, as he seems to advocate that it is not possible to reduce “ought” to “is” while he also proposes the reduction of oughts to facts about volition.