Laws of Nature as Constraints

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new framework for understanding the laws of nature as modal structures, addressing challenges posed by non-local, atemporal, and retrocausal laws beyond traditional dynamical paradigms.

Contribution

It introduces a modal-based approach to lawhood, providing a general framework for analyzing laws outside the standard time evolution paradigm.

Findings

Develops a modal structure framework for laws of nature.

Addresses challenges of non-local and atemporal laws.

Offers a new perspective on lawhood in physics.

Abstract

The laws of nature have come a long way since the time of Newton: quantum mechanics and relativity have given us good reasons to take seriously the possibility of laws which may be non-local, atemporal, `all-at-once,' retrocausal, or in some other way not well-suited to the standard dynamical time evolution paradigm. But many extant realist approaches to lawhood are based on the paradigm of Newtonian laws, and thus they face significant challenges when we try to apply them to laws outside the time evolution picture. In light of these developments, we are in need of a new approach to lawhood which is better suited for laws outside the time evolution paradigm. In the present paper, we argue that this can be achieved within an approach which conceptualizes lawhood in terms of modal structure, and we set out a general framework in which the modal structure associated with a wide class of possible laws can be expressed and studied.