How is it rational for us to form, maintain, and revise our intentions, in cases where we are not certain of what the outcomes of the available acts will be? The mental events in which we form or revise our intentions are choices or decisions. So, to answer this question, it is natural to look to the approach that has been developed by classical decision theory (also known as rational choice th...

Abstract In this paper, I point to two problems engendered by assumptions that Hume makes. The first is his nominalism: the view all ideas are fully determinate with respect aspects represented in them. second, perhaps hitherto unnoticed, names denote ideas. propose some solutions, aiming find one Humean.

Scientific essentialism aims to account for the natural laws’ special capacity to support counterfactuals. I argue that scientific essentialism can do so only by resorting to devices that are just as ad hoc as those that essentialists accuse Humean regularity theories of employing. I conclude by offering an account of the laws’ distinctive relation to counterfactuals that portrays laws as conti...

I argue that there is a tension in our theorizing about laws of nature. We have powerful reasons to think that laws are not universal generalizations – if they are we would face the problem of explanatory circularity. But we have powerful reasons, stemming from our practice of using and reasoning with laws of nature, to think that laws are universal generalizations. I start by elucidating this ...