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Single Idea 16211

[filed under theme 7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / d. Humean supervenience ]

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.


The 8 ideas with the same theme [everything supervenes on some simple base]:

We don't recognise patterns - we invent them [Goodman]
Humean supervenience says the world is just a vast mosaic of qualities in space-time [Lewis]
A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience [Hawley]
The Humean view is wrong; laws and direction of time are primitive, and atoms are decided by physics [Maudlin]
Lewis says it supervenes on the Mosaic, but actually thinks the Mosaic is all there is [Maudlin]
If the Humean Mosaic is ontological bedrock, there can be no explanation of its structure [Maudlin]
The 'spinning disc' is just impossible, because there cannot be 'homogeneous matter' [Maudlin]
The Humean supervenience base entirely excludes modality [Vetter]