Constraint Accounts of Laws

Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy (2025)
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Abstract

In recent work, Adlam (2022b), Chen and Goldstein (2022), and Meacham (2023) have defended accounts of laws that take laws to be primitive global constraints. A major advantage of these accounts is that they're able to accommodate the many different kinds of laws that appear in physical theories. In this paper I'll present these three accounts, highlight their distinguishing features, and note some key differences that might lead one to favor one of these accounts over the others. I'll conclude by briefly discussing a version of a “constraint” account that I think is especially attractive.

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Christopher J. G. Meacham
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

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References found in this work

Laws and symmetry.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.
Nature's Metaphysics: Laws and Properties.Alexander Bird - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The metaphysics within physics.Tim Maudlin - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Science Without Numbers: A Defence of Nominalism.Hartry H. Field - 1980 - Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.

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