What is Humean supervenience?

Humean supervenience is a philosophical concept that originates from the thoughts of David Hume, particularly regarding the relationship between particular facts and the general laws or patterns that emerge from them. The term was popularized in contemporary philosophy, particularly in discussions of metaphysics and moral philosophy. Humean supervenience posits that all factual properties and relations in the world (including those concerning moral values, mental states, or the nature of the universe) are ultimately determined by the distribution of local, particular instances or facts. In simpler terms, it suggests that the nature of the world can be reduced to or explained by the particular, concrete facts about the world at a given time, without the need for any additional, higher-level properties or entities. Key features of Humean supervenience include: 1. **Dependence on Particulars**: The truths about higher-level properties or phenomena (like moral values or psychological states) depend on or supervene on the specific, local states of affairs. 2. **No Necessary Connections**: There are no necessary connections beyond the empirical facts; in other words, one cannot derive or deduce higher-level phenomena purely from the lower-level particulars without reference to those particulars themselves. 3. **Global Regularities**: The concept emphasizes that global regularities or patterns can emerge from the accumulation of particular instances, but these patterns do not exert causal powers beyond what the particulars can account for. Humean supervenience has implications for debates in philosophy of mind, ethics, and metaphysics, particularly concerning issues like the nature of consciousness, moral realism, and the status of laws of nature. It supports a kind of reductionism, suggesting that explanations of complex phenomena can ultimately be traced back to simpler, more fundamental facts.