The Nature of Laws

Tooley, Michael

doi:10.1080/00455091.1977.10716190

Cited by 583 publications

(162 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…8 To be fair to Tooley (1977), he is more open to the Platonic view than nomological realists like Armstrong.…”

Section: Alien Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Universals, laws, and governance

Tugby

2015

Philos Stud

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The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. 2 necessitation between categorical universals, is one influential approach, but the dispositional theory of universals is arguably the most popular anti-Humean strategy at present. The dispositional view comes in more than one variety, but the most discussed version says that at least some universals are 'pure powers', which is to say there is nothing more to them than the dispositions they confer (see e.g. the term 'dispositionalism' to refer to this pure powers view, which will be explained further below. 2 Note also that following the authors just listed, I will assume a realist framework of universals for the purposes of this paper. 3 Now, how much does dispositionalism differ from other anti-Humean approaches, such as the Dretske-Tooley-Armstrong (DTA) view of laws? Most dispositionalists take the difference to be substantial. Proponents of the DTA view fall into the category of those who favour a thoroughly realist, governing conceptions of laws. This is because they appeal to relations of natural necessitation between categorical properties (universals) which are external and contingent, and which are supposed to explain the behavioural regularities in the world. In contrast, it is typically denied that dispositionalism offers a realist, governing conception of laws even though it does attempt to provide an explanation for behavioural regularities. On the dispositional view, the explanation is provided by the essential natures of the fundamental properties. Natural properties are said to have dispositional essences, which means that, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, possessors of those properties 2 The main alternatives to the 'pure' version of the dispositional theory are the two-sided and identity views. The two sided view says that all natural properties have an inert qualitative (or 'categorical') side as well as a dispositional side, whereas the identity view says that the qualitative and dispositional 'aspects' of properties are one and the same. Interested readers should see Martin (2008) andHeil (2003).3 Unfortunately, I do not have the space in this paper to discuss trope versions of dispositionalism. Incidentally, Ithink that the trope version of the dispositional theory is unworkable and I direct interested readers to my 2013, Section 2. For those who think that trope dispositionalism is a feasible alternative, the main conclusion of this paper may be considered a conditional thesis: that if dispositional properties are universals, then dispositionalism i...

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“…8 To be fair to Tooley (1977), he is more open to the Platonic view than nomological realists like Armstrong.…”

Section: Alien Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 Anti-Humean theories, in contrast, try to provide metaphysical explanations for the behavioural regularities in nature. The nomological realism of Dretske (1977), Tooley (1977) and Armstrong (1983), on which laws are relations of natural 1 See e.g. Lewis 1973, pp.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Universals, laws, and governance

Tugby

2015

Philos Stud

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“…The 'merely' here is doing a hefty bit of work: it distinguishes the laws of the regularity theorist from the more metaphysically robust laws of her interlocutors, who I will call 'modalists' 2 . Modalist views are less metaphysically perspicuous than the regularity theory because they claim that, to be laws, a generalization must be backed, made true, or associated with a relation between properties (Armstrong [1983]; Dretske [1977]; Tooley [1977]), the essences of properties (Shoemaker [1980]; Ellis [2001]; Bird [2007]), sui generis facts about production (Maudlin [2007]), or irreducible counterfactuals (Lange [2007]). These bits of metaphysical machinery underwrite the necessity of the laws.…”

Section: The Best Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic Humeanism

Hicks

2018

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

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Humean accounts of laws of nature fail to distinguish between dynamic laws and static initial conditions. But this distinction plays a central role in scientific theorizing and explanation. I motivate the claim that this distinction should matter for the Humean, and show that current views lack the resources to explain it. I then develop a regularity theory which captures this distinction. My view takes empirical accessibility to be one of the primary features of laws, and I identify features laws must have to be empirically accessible. I then argue that laws with these features tend to be dynamic.

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“…First, if anything remotely like Lewis's 'best systems' account of laws is right, then instances of (3) plausibly will qualify as laws in radium-containing worlds at which T 0 is true: they are simple, and they are very informative. Second, the best-known non-Lewisian account of law, that due to Armstrong ([1983]), Dretske ([1977]) and Tooley ([1977]) -henceforth 'ADT'-is unthreatening. ADT hold that it is a law that all Fs are Gs just in case a relation of necessitation holds between corresponding universals, Fness and Gness.…”

Section: Lawsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Finite Frequentism in a Big World

Tosh¹

2016

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

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The view that chances are relative frequencies of occurrence within actual, finite reference classes has long been written off. I argue that it ought to be reconsidered. Focussing on non-deterministic chance, I defend a version of finite frequentism in which reference classmates are required to have qualitatively identical pasts. While my analysis can evade or resist several standard objections, it has a counterintuitive consequence: non-trivial chances entail the existence of light cones that are perfect intrinsic duplicates. In mitigation, I argue that our scientific knowledge is consistent with the hypothesis that there are many such duplicates in the actual world. Moreover, my analysis has some striking advantages: it is simple, it is metaphysically undemanding, and it makes possible a satisfying explanation of the chance-credence connection.

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The Nature of Laws

Cited by 583 publications

References 4 publications

Universals, laws, and governance

Universals, laws, and governance

Dynamic Humeanism

Finite Frequentism in a Big World

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