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Full Idea
Hume's Dictum says there are no necessary connections between existences, …and also between the distinct properties that individuals instantiate. …It follows that an object's property of mass and its disposition to warp space-time could come apart.
Gist of Idea
Hume's Dictum says no connections are necessary - so mass and spacetime warping could separate
Source
Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.2)
Book Ref
Friend/Kimpton-Nye: 'Dispositions and Powers' [CUP 2023], p.45
A Reaction
[compressed] This nicely pinpoints the heart of the Humean view, to which scientific essentialists and fans of powers in nature object. The objectors include me.
| 17004 | Nothing can break the binding laws of eternity [Lucretius] |
| 16686 | God has established laws throughout nature, and implanted ideas of them within us [Descartes] |
| 15820 | A 'law of nature' is just something which is physically necessary [Chisholm] |
| 15867 | Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature [Harré] |
| 15860 | We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws [Harré] |
| 15872 | Must laws of nature be universal, or could they be local? [Harré] |
| 15238 | Being lawlike seems to resist formal analysis, because there are always counter-examples [Harré/Madden] |
| 14349 | If there are no finks or antidotes at the fundamental level, the laws can't be ceteris paribus [Burge, by Corry] |
| 3525 | Strict laws make causation logically necessary [Maslin] |
| 3527 | Strict laws allow no exceptions and are part of a closed system [Maslin] |
| 14575 | A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 23706 | Hume's Dictum says no connections are necessary - so mass and spacetime warping could separate [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |