Christian Loew
Biographic Data
| ID | 5910907 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christian Loew |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christian |
| FAMILY NAME | Loew |
| SIGNATURE | LOEW C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Luxembourg |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4051-2476 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 23 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Humeanism, Modality, and the Governing Conception of Natural Laws
A common objection against Humean reductionism about laws is an argument from governing: It is natural to think that laws of nature govern. But in order to govern the laws need to be independent of the phenomena they govern. Hence, Humean laws, which reduce to patterns in the phenomena and so lack this independence, cannot govern. A standard Humean response to this argument is that we should not place much weight on the intuition that laws govern…
The normative force of natural laws
The debate about laws of nature mainly focuses on the laws’ connection to regularities and modal facts. The much-discussed inference problem concerns why ‘it is a law that p’ entails ‘ p’ . Another problem (the ‘ modality problem ’) is about the need to explain the laws’ relation to counterfactuals, causation, and dispositions. In this paper, we argue that a third problem, the ‘ normativity problem’ , should play an equally important role in the …
Doing Otherwise in a Deterministic World
An influential version of the Consequence argument, the most famous argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism, goes as follows: For an agent to be able to do otherwise, there has to be a possible world with the same laws and the same past as her actual world in which she does otherwise. However, if the actual world is deterministic, there is no such world. Hence, no agent in a deterministic world can ever do otherwise. In this…
Are we free to make the laws
Humeans about laws maintain that laws of nature are nothing over and above the complete distribution of non-modal, categorical properties in spacetime. ‘Humean compatibilists’ argue that if Humeanism about laws is true, then agents in a deterministic world can do otherwise than they are lawfully determined to do because of the distinctive nature of Humean laws. More specifically, they reject a central premise of the Consequence argument by mainta…
Why Defend Humean Supervenience
Humean Supervenience (HS) is a metaphysical model of the world according to which all truths hold in virtue of nothing but the total spatiotemporal distribution of perfectly natural, intrinsic properties. David Lewis and others have worked out many aspects of HS in great detail. A larger motivational question, however, remains unanswered: As Lewis admits, there is strong evidence from fundamental physics that HS is false. What then is the purpose…
Co-citations in context
Citation analysis of the scientific literature has been used to study and define disciplinary boundaries, to trace the dissemination of knowledge, and to estimate impact. Co-citation, the frequency with which pairs of publications are cited, provides insight into how documents relate to each other and across fields. Co-citation analysis has been used to characterize combinations of prior work as conventional or innovative and to derive features o…
Making best systems best for us
Humean Laws and (Nested) Counterfactuals
Humean 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 m…
Fundamentality and Time’s Arrow
The distribution of matter in our universe is strikingly time asymmetric. Most famously, the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that entropy tends to increase toward the future but not toward the past. But what explains this time-asymmetric distribution of matter? In this article, I explore the idea that time itself has a direction by drawing from recent work on grounding and metaphysical fundamentality. I will argue that positing such a direction…
Causation, physics, and fit
The Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence
A certain type of counterfactual is thought to be intimately related to causation, control, and explanation. The time asymmetry of these phenomena therefore plausibly arises from a time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence. But why is counterfactual dependence time asymmetric? The most influential account of the time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence is David Albert’s account, which posits a new, time-asymmetric fundamental physical law, t…
Causes As Difference‐Makers For Processes
It is natural to think of causes as difference‐makers. What exact difference causes make, however, is an open question. In this paper, I argue that the right way of understanding difference‐making is in terms of causal processes: causes make a difference to a causal process that leads to the effect. I will show that this way of understanding difference‐making nicely captures the distinction between causing an outcome and helping determine how the…
Making best systems best for us
Fundamentality and Time’s Arrow
The distribution of matter in our universe is strikingly time asymmetric. Most famously, the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that entropy tends to increase toward the future but not toward the past. But what explains this time-asymmetric distribution of matter? In this article, I explore the idea that time itself has a direction by drawing from recent work on grounding and metaphysical fundamentality. I will argue that positing such a direction…
Humean Laws and (Nested) Counterfactuals
Humean 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 m…
Causation, physics, and fit
Causes As Difference‐Makers For Processes
It is natural to think of causes as difference‐makers. What exact difference causes make, however, is an open question. In this paper, I argue that the right way of understanding difference‐making is in terms of causal processes: causes make a difference to a causal process that leads to the effect. I will show that this way of understanding difference‐making nicely captures the distinction between causing an outcome and helping determine how the…
Causation, physics, and fit
The Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence
A certain type of counterfactual is thought to be intimately related to causation, control, and explanation. The time asymmetry of these phenomena therefore plausibly arises from a time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence. But why is counterfactual dependence time asymmetric? The most influential account of the time asymmetry of counterfactual dependence is David Albert’s account, which posits a new, time-asymmetric fundamental physical law, t…
Causes As Difference‐Makers For Processes
It is natural to think of causes as difference‐makers. What exact difference causes make, however, is an open question. In this paper, I argue that the right way of understanding difference‐making is in terms of causal processes: causes make a difference to a causal process that leads to the effect. I will show that this way of understanding difference‐making nicely captures the distinction between causing an outcome and helping determine how the…
Fundamentality and Time’s Arrow
The distribution of matter in our universe is strikingly time asymmetric. Most famously, the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that entropy tends to increase toward the future but not toward the past. But what explains this time-asymmetric distribution of matter? In this article, I explore the idea that time itself has a direction by drawing from recent work on grounding and metaphysical fundamentality. I will argue that positing such a direction…
Humean Laws and (Nested) Counterfactuals
Humean 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 m…
Why Defend Humean Supervenience
Humean Supervenience (HS) is a metaphysical model of the world according to which all truths hold in virtue of nothing but the total spatiotemporal distribution of perfectly natural, intrinsic properties. David Lewis and others have worked out many aspects of HS in great detail. A larger motivational question, however, remains unanswered: As Lewis admits, there is strong evidence from fundamental physics that HS is false. What then is the purpose…
Co-citations in context
Citation analysis of the scientific literature has been used to study and define disciplinary boundaries, to trace the dissemination of knowledge, and to estimate impact. Co-citation, the frequency with which pairs of publications are cited, provides insight into how documents relate to each other and across fields. Co-citation analysis has been used to characterize combinations of prior work as conventional or innovative and to derive features o…
Making best systems best for us
Are we free to make the laws
Humeans about laws maintain that laws of nature are nothing over and above the complete distribution of non-modal, categorical properties in spacetime. ‘Humean compatibilists’ argue that if Humeanism about laws is true, then agents in a deterministic world can do otherwise than they are lawfully determined to do because of the distinctive nature of Humean laws. More specifically, they reject a central premise of the Consequence argument by mainta…
Doing Otherwise in a Deterministic World
An influential version of the Consequence argument, the most famous argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism, goes as follows: For an agent to be able to do otherwise, there has to be a possible world with the same laws and the same past as her actual world in which she does otherwise. However, if the actual world is deterministic, there is no such world. Hence, no agent in a deterministic world can ever do otherwise. In this…
Humeanism, Modality, and the Governing Conception of Natural Laws
A common objection against Humean reductionism about laws is an argument from governing: It is natural to think that laws of nature govern. But in order to govern the laws need to be independent of the phenomena they govern. Hence, Humean laws, which reduce to patterns in the phenomena and so lack this independence, cannot govern. A standard Humean response to this argument is that we should not place much weight on the intuition that laws govern…
The normative force of natural laws
The debate about laws of nature mainly focuses on the laws’ connection to regularities and modal facts. The much-discussed inference problem concerns why ‘it is a law that p’ entails ‘ p’ . Another problem (the ‘ modality problem ’) is about the need to explain the laws’ relation to counterfactuals, causation, and dispositions. In this paper, we argue that a third problem, the ‘ normativity problem’ , should play an equally important role in the …
Epistemology (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (10 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (6 works) · Metaphysics (6 works) · Causation (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Philosophy of language (4 works)