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Relational Holism and Humean Supervenience

Darby, George (2012) Relational Holism and Humean Supervenience. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 63 (4). pp. 773-788. ISSN 0007-0882. (doi:10.1093/bjps/axr049) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:31054)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axr049

Abstract

It has been widely noted that Humean supervenience, according to which everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them, is at odds with the nonlocal character of quantum mechanics, according to which not everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them. In particular, a standard view is that the parts of a composite quantum system instantiate further relations which are not accounted for in Lewis's Humean mosaic. But that suggests a simple solution: Why couldn't Lewis simply add these new relations to the supervenience basis? The aim of this article is to use Humean supervenience as a foil to spell out a feature of entanglement of general metaphysical interest: The way in which the metaphysical lessons drawn for two-party systems ramify when systems of many parties are considered. The main conclusion is that the proposed simple fix in fact results in a supervenience thesis different in kind from Lewis's, by making the relations in the supervenience basis global in a certain sense.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1093/bjps/axr049
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Culture and Languages
Depositing User: Fiona Symes
Date Deposited: 28 Sep 2012 13:40 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:08 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/31054 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Darby, George.

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