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Dretske on Laws of Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Ilkka Niiniluoto
Ilkka Niiniluoto*
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
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Extract

In a recent article [4], Fred I. Dretske has proposed a new analysis of natural laws. Dretske rejects the more or less standard view which says that laws are universal truths with a special function or status in science. As an alternative account, he suggests that laws are expressed by singular statements describing the relationship between universal properties and magnitudes: the statement

(1) It is a law that F's are G's3.

is to be analysed as

(2) F-ness ↦ G-ness.

I shall argue, however, that Dretske's reasons for rejecting the standard account are not conclusive. Moreover, his own proposal seems to be either inadequate or reducible to that version of the standard account which takes laws to be nomically necessary generalizations.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 431 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1978

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