No laws and (thin) powers in, no (governing) laws out

Powers and Alternative Laws

A groupoid is alternative if it satisfies the alternative laws x(xy) = (xx)y and x(yy) = (xy)y. These laws induce four partial maps on N+ × N+ (r, s) 7→ (2r, s− r), (r − s, 2s), (r/2, s + r/2), (r + s/2, s/2), that taken together form a dynamical system. We describe the orbits of this dynamical system, which allows us to show that nth powers in a free alternative groupoid on one generator are w...

No-Fault Laws and At-Fault People

Beyond Reductionism Twice: No Laws Entail Biosphere Evolution, Formal Cause Laws Beyond Efficient Cause Laws

Newton set the stage for our view of how science should be done. We remain in what I will call the “Newtonian Paradigm in all of physics, including Newton, Einstein, and Schrodinger. As I will show shortly, Newton invented and bequeathed to us “efficient cause entailing laws” for the entire becoming of the universe. With Laplace this became the foundation of contemporary reductionism in which a...

No 1374 October 2015 Crime , Compulsory Schooling Laws and Education

Do compulsory schooling laws reduce crime? Previous evidence for the U.S. from the 1960s and 1970s suggests they do, primarily working through their effect on educational attainment to generate a causal impact on crime. In this paper, we consider whether more recent experience replicates this. There are two key findings. First, there is a strong and consistent negative effect on crime from stri...

Kant on causal laws and powers.

The aim of the paper is threefold. Its first aim is to defend Eric Watkins's claim that for Kant, a cause is not an event but a causal power: a power that is borne by a substance, and that, when active, brings about its effect, i.e. a change of the states of another substance, by generating a continuous flow of intermediate states of that substance. The second aim of the paper is to argue again...