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Regularity Comparativism about Mass in Newtonian Gravity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Niels C. M. Martens
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Abstract

Comparativism—the view that mass ratios are not grounded in absolute masses—faces a challenge by Baker which suggests that absolute masses are empirically meaningful. Regularity comparativism uses a liberalized version of the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis Best Systems Account to have both the laws of Newtonian gravity and the absolute mass scale supervene on a comparativist Humean mosaic as a package deal. I discuss three objections to this view and conclude that it is untenable. The most severe problem is that once we have reduced away the absolute masses, there is nothing that stops us from also reducing the mass ratios.

Type
Physical Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 5 , December 2017 , pp. 1226 - 1238
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Casey McCoy, Tushar Menon, and Oliver Pooley for useful discussions and comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am grateful for questions and comments from the audiences at the following 2016 seminars and conferences: “Philosophy of Physics Graduate Lunch Seminar” and “Philosophy of Physics Research Seminar” at the University of Oxford, “Society for the Metaphysics of Science Annual Conference” at the University of Geneva, and “PSA2016” in Atlanta. This material is based on work supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK, a Scatcherd European Scholarship, and in part by the DFG Research Unit “The Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider” (grant FOR 2063). The major part of this article was written while I was at Magdalen College and Department of Philosophy, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

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