Chris Dorst

Biographic Data

ID1165116
NAMEChris Dorst
GIVEN NAMESChris
FAMILY NAMEDorst
SIGNATUREDORST C
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Florida
ORCID0000-0002-8644-9460
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS8
TOTAL CITATIONS22
WORKS AS AUTHOR8
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2018
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX1

  • Laws of Nature and Chances

    Chris DorstARTICLEThe Philosophical Review2026References: 1

    This rich and thought-provoking book should set the agenda for discussion about Humean approaches to the metaphysics of laws and chances for years to come. Its aim is an overhaul of the Lewisian Best System Account (“BSA”) that allows the systematization itself to deliver the fundamental ontology and space-time structure in addition to the laws. The view, which Loewer calls the Package Deal Account (“PDA”), will be familiar in broad strokes to th…

  • The Necessity of Accidents in advance

    Chris Dorst, Christopher Dorst et al.ARTICLEThe Journal of Philosophy2025

    We argue that if there are laws of nature, then there must also be accidents. If the “laws” in a world suffice to determine the world’s entire history, then these “laws” cannot play various central roles characteristic of laws, and thus (we conclude) they are not laws at all. Many proposed accounts of lawhood (primitivist accounts, universals accounts, the Best System Account, the Package Deal Account, essentialist accounts) inappropriately permi…

  • Does the Best System Need the Past Hypothesis

    Open AccessChris DorstARTICLEPhilosophy of Science2024References: 39

    Many philosophers sympathetic with Humeanism about laws have thought that the fundamental laws will include not only the traditional dynamical equations, but also two additional principles: the Past Hypothesis (PH) and the Statistical Postulate (SP). PH says that the universe began in a particular very-low-entropy macrostate M(0), and SP posits a uniform probability distribution over the microstates compatible with M(0). This view is arguably vin…

  • There is no measurement problem for Humeans

    Open AccessChris DorstARTICLENoûs2023

    The measurement problem concerns an apparent conflict between the two fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, namely the Schrödinger equation and the measurement postulate. These principles describe inconsistent behavior for quantum systems in so‐called “measurement contexts.” Many theorists have thought that the measurement problem can only be resolved by proposing a mechanistic explanation of (genuine or apparent) wavefunction collapse tha…

  • Why do the Laws Support Counterfactuals

    Open AccessChris DorstARTICLEErkenntnis2022

  • Laws, melodies, and the paradox of predictability

    Open AccessChris DorstARTICLESynthese2022References: 34

  • Towards a Best Predictive System Account of Laws of Nature

    Open AccessChris DorstARTICLEThe British Journal for the…2019Cited by: 22References: 15

    This article argues for a revised best system account (BSA) of laws of nature. David Lewis’s original BSA has two main elements. On the one hand, there is the Humean base, which is the totality of particular matters of fact that obtain in the history of the universe. On the other hand, there is what I call the ‘nomic formula’, which is a particular operation that gets applied to the Humean base in order to output the laws of nature. My revised ac…

  • Bet Accepted

    Chris Dorst, Christopher DorstARTICLEThe Philosophical Quarterly2018

    Wolfgang Freitag claims to have developed a proposal that solves Goodman's famous New Riddle of Induction. His proposal makes use of the notion of ‘derivative defeat’; the claim is that in certain circumstances, the projection of some predicates is derivatively defeated, i.e., it is inductively invalid. Freitag develops the proposal using some compelling examples, and then shows that it likewise applies to the argument at the basis of the New Rid…