It is a traditional empiricist doctrine that natural laws are universal truths. In order to overcome the obvious difficulties with this equation most empiricists qualify it by proposing to equate laws with universal truths that play a certain role, or have a certain function, within the larger scientific enterprise. This view is examined in detail and rejected; it fails to account for a variety of features that laws are acknowledged to have. An alternative view is advanced in which laws are (...) expressed by singular statements of fact describing the relationship between universal properties and magnitudes. (shrink)

The author criticizes pear's use of the notion of material implication in his explanation of contrary-To-Fact conditionals. The author attempts to show that universal material implications "have no relevance to contrary-To-Fact conditionals." (staff).

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 It is a law that F's are G's3.is to be analysed as 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. (shrink)

The following questions are discussed here. Is induction a reasonable procedure in the context of a denial of physically necessary connections? What is physical necessity? If induction does presuppose physical necessity, what amount of it is presupposed? It is argued that with logic as the only restriction on what is to count as a possible world, it is unreasonable to claim that observed connections, whether universal or statistical, will continue to hold. The concept of physical necessity is no more problematic (...) than that of logical necessity, once it is recognized that the necessity of physical and logical necessity is the same. A variant of Keynes' principle of limited independent variety answers the question of the amount of physical necessity presupposed. (shrink)

Davidson's defective defense of the consistency of (1) the causal interaction of mental and physical events, (2) the backing law thesis on causation, (3) the impossibility of lawfully explaining mental events is repaired by closer attention to the description-Relativity of explanation. Davidson wrongly allows that particular mental events are explainable when particular identities to physical events are known. The author argues that such identities are powerless to affect what features a given law can explain. Thus a great intelligence knowing all (...) the physical laws could not explain a single mental event, As such, Even if he knew all particular identities. (shrink)