Siegfried Jaag
Biographic Data
| ID | 5910908 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Siegfried Jaag |
| GIVEN NAMES | Siegfried |
| FAMILY NAME | Jaag |
| SIGNATURE | JAAG S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf |
| ORCID | 0009-0009-9579-0271 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 6 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
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 …
A puzzle about laws and explanation
In this paper, we argue that the popular claim that laws of nature explain their instances ( explanatory laws ) creates a philosophical puzzle when it is combined with the widely held requirement that explanations need to be underpinned by ‘wordly’ relations ( explanatory realism ). We argue that a “direct solution” to the puzzle that accounts for both explanatory laws and explanatory realism requires endorsing at least a radical metaphysics. The…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Making best systems best for us
A puzzle about laws and explanation
In this paper, we argue that the popular claim that laws of nature explain their instances ( explanatory laws ) creates a philosophical puzzle when it is combined with the widely held requirement that explanations need to be underpinned by ‘wordly’ relations ( explanatory realism ). We argue that a “direct solution” to the puzzle that accounts for both explanatory laws and explanatory realism requires endorsing at least a radical metaphysics. The…
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 (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Metaphysics (4 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (3 works) · Philosophy of language (3 works)