pragmatist comments on [Poll] Less Wrong and Mainstream Philosophy: How Different are We? - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 26 September 2012 12:25PM

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Comment author: pragmatist 16 January 2013 05:39:55PM *  0 points [-]

Out of curiosity, do you have on hand any good articles on how Humeans (metaphysically, epistemically, etc.) distinguish 'mere patterns' from 'capital-p Patterns'? (Aside from anthropocentric concepts like explanatory reducibility.)

The classic neo-Humean account is David Lewis's. It's described in the SEP here. I also wrote a post about it here. The account does appeal to the simplicity of descriptions, which is arguably a somewhat anthropocentric concept, but I see that as a feature, not a bug. The laws are ways of efficiently organizing our understanding of the universe, not fundamental mind-independent entities (see the last section of my post). I don't think Lewis would agree with my characterization in this regard, I should say.