Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

It has been argued that supervenience is unable to capture the relation of metaphysical dependence that is at work in many philosophical theories. Even so, supervenience may still be useful in elucidating them, by enabling us to extract some of their central commitments. In light of this, I set up a general framework for drawing out the supervenience commitments of exclusive positivism in the philosophy of law, and explore the question which supervenience relation we should use in carrying out this task. After assessing various candidates, I argue that, given suitable assumptions regarding what properties ought to be included in the supervenience base set, a kind of strong supervenience is the notion that best captures the positivist modal commitments.