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Full Idea
Imagine a perfectly homogeneous non-atomistic disc. A record of all the non-relational information about the world at that moment will not reveal whether the disc is rotating about a vertical axis through. This tells against Humean supervenience.
Gist of Idea
A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience
Source
Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.2)
Book Ref
Hawley,Katherine: 'How Things Persist' [OUP 2004], p.73
A Reaction
[Armstrong 1980 originated this, and it is famously discussed by Kripke in lectures] There will, of course, be dispositions present because of the rotation, but Lewis excludes any such modal truths.
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] |