Hicks Michael Townsen
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Philos Stud. 2021;178(2):533-557. doi: 10.1007/s11098-020-01444-9. Epub 2020 Mar 30.
Humeans are often accused of positing laws which fail to explain or are involved in explanatory circularity. Here, I will argue that these arguments are confused, but not because of anything to do with Humeanism: rather, they rest on false assumptions about causal explanation. I'll show how these arguments can be neatly sidestepped if one takes on two plausible commitments which are motivated independently of Humeanism: first, that laws don't directly feature in scientific explanation (a view defended recently by Ruben in R Inst Philos Suppl 27:95-117, 1990, 10.1017/S1358246100005063 and Skow in Reasons why, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016) and second, the view that explanation is contrastive. After outlining and motivating these views, I show how they bear on explanation-based arguments against Humeanism.
休谟主义者常常被指责提出的定律无法进行解释或陷入了解释循环。在此，我将论证这些论点是混乱的，但并非因为与休谟主义有任何关系：相反，它们基于关于因果解释的错误假设。我将表明，如果一个人接受两个独立于休谟主义而有动机的合理承诺，这些论点是可以巧妙避开的：第一，定律并不直接出现在科学解释中（这一观点最近由鲁本在《皇家哲学学会增刊》第27卷：95 - 117页，1990年，doi:10.1017/S1358246100005063以及斯科在《原因》一书中，牛津大学出版社，牛津，2016年所捍卫）；第二，解释是对比性的这一观点。在概述并阐述这些观点之后，我将展示它们如何与基于解释的反对休谟主义的论点相关。
