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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Even on a Humean view of laws, it does not automatically follow that humans have the freedom to have done otherwise given certain past states of affairs.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.On a Humean Best Systems Account (Lewis 1994), laws supervene on the totality of particular facts, including all actual human choices.
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    • 2.If an agent could have chosen otherwise, the best system systematizing that counterfactual history might yield different laws, making 'same laws, different choice' metaphysically incoherent.
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    • 3.Therefore, Humean laws do not constrain agents from without but are partly constituted by their actions, undercutting the claim that Humeanism leaves deterministic unfreedom intact.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Compatibilists like Lewis (1981) distinguish between the ability to act such that the past would have been different and the ability to act such that the laws would have been violated.
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    • 2.On a Humean view, since laws have no governing necessity, an agent's counterfactual choice revises the Humean mosaic rather than 'breaking' a law, making the soft determinist's local-miracle compatibilism more tractable than on governing-laws views.
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    • 3.The supporting argument's premise 3 therefore actually supports compatibilist freedom rather than undermining it, reversing the direction of the original claim.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.On a Humean view, laws of nature are exceptionless regularities that are simple and strong, but derive their status partly from what actually occurs.
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    • 2.Human actions being part of what makes the laws be what they are does not entail that humans could have acted differently under the same past conditions.
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    • 3.The claim that if a person had chosen otherwise then Maxwell's equations would not have been laws does not follow directly from a Humean approach to laws of nature.
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    Strongest counterpoint
    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.