TY - JOUR TI - Humeanism after the BSA DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T36112B0 PY - 2016 AB - This dissertation explores the idea that laws of nature are tools for gaining and employing information about the world. In my first chapter, I focus on the Best System Account of laws of nature, according to which the laws are those generalizations which form a deductive system best combining strength and simplicity. I claim that we must focus on the applicability of laws to the sorts of subsystems of the universe with which we interact and manipulate. This provides us with the tools to develop new notions of informativeness and simplicity, and sheds light on our preference for dynamic explanations. In the second chapter, I show how best to extend a Best Systems based account to the special sciences. I argue that extant theories of the relationship between fundamental and special sciences either deemphasize interscientific connections or do little justice to the counterfactual robustness of laws in the special sciences. We need the special sciences in addition to physics because often we have only coarse-grained information about our surroundings, so we need coarse-grained laws to make predictions. I provide a precise characterization of coarse-graining and show how it can be applied to the relationship between the special sciences and physics. In the third chapter, I argue that importing notions from epistemic utility theory provides an account of objective chance which explains both the connection between chances and frequencies and the connection between chances and degrees of belief. This account relies crucially on the notion of an isolated subsystem developed in the first chapter of the dissertation, and aims to show that the objective chances we find in science are fit to act as a guide to our beliefs. I show how measures of accuracy currently being developed in epistemic utility theory can be applied to measure how well the chances of some class of events–say, coin tosses–fit the frequency of outcomes. KW - Philosophy KW - Science--Philosophy LA - eng ER -