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Full Idea
Humean supervenience says the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact. We have a geometry of external relations of spatio-temporal distance between points, and local qualities at points. …In short: we have an arrangement of qualities.
Gist of Idea
Humean supervenience says the world is just a vast mosaic of qualities in space-time
Source
David Lewis (Introduction to Philosophical Papers II [1986], p.ix-x)
Book Ref
Lewis,David: 'Philosophical Papers Vol.2' [OUP 1986], p.-10
A Reaction
[compressed] This is the key fundamental tenet of David Lewis's philosophy. He names it after Hume because it contains no necessary connections. It is 'supervenient' because all worldly truths reduce to and depend on the mosaic. His thesis is contingent.
17661 | We don't recognise patterns - we invent them [Goodman] |
16210 | Humean supervenience says the world is just a vast mosaic of qualities in space-time [Lewis] |
16211 | A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience [Hawley] |
16243 | The Humean view is wrong; laws and direction of time are primitive, and atoms are decided by physics [Maudlin] |
16271 | Lewis says it supervenes on the Mosaic, but actually thinks the Mosaic is all there is [Maudlin] |
16273 | If the Humean Mosaic is ontological bedrock, there can be no explanation of its structure [Maudlin] |
16275 | The 'spinning disc' is just impossible, because there cannot be 'homogeneous matter' [Maudlin] |
19012 | The Humean supervenience base entirely excludes modality [Vetter] |