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Textbook What Is A Law of Nature D M Armstrong Ebook All Chapter PDF
Textbook What Is A Law of Nature D M Armstrong Ebook All Chapter PDF
Textbook What Is A Law of Nature D M Armstrong Ebook All Chapter PDF
Armstrong
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What is a Law of Nature?
CAMBRIDGE PHILOSOPHY CLASSICS
B
d. m. armstrong
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781316507094
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
vii
viii
B
David Armstrong’s What is a Law of Nature? is a beautiful book. It offers its
readers an exciting philosophical problem at the busy intersection of
metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science – namely, what
makes certain facts constitute matters of natural law? How do laws of
nature (such as, according to current science, the fact that electric charge is
conserved) differ from accidents (such as, in Reichenbach’s example from
Elements of Symbolic Logic, the fact that all solid gold cubes are smaller than
one cubic mile)? In virtue of what is the former a law of nature whereas the
latter is a coincidence – a ‘historical accident on the cosmic scale’ (Kneale,
‘Natural Laws and Contrary-to-Fact Conditionals’)? I am one of the many
students who, after reading Armstrong’s magisterial book, was firmly in
the grip of this problem. It has never let go.
Armstrong’s book exemplifies a familiar pattern of philosophical expos-
ition. Armstrong begins by marshalling a wide variety of arguments
against various proposed answers to his title question. His systematic
exploration of the resources available to ‘regularity accounts’ of law ultim-
ately leads him to investigate the advantages of and obstacles facing
David Lewis’s ‘Best System Account’. Having sharpened the challenges
facing any proposal, Armstrong then gives his own account of what laws
of nature are: contingent relations of ‘nomic necessitation’ among proper-
ties (i.e., universals). Armstrong works out his proposal methodically,
displaying both its strengths and its difficulties. (Fred Dretske (in ‘Laws
of Nature’) and Michael Tooley (in ‘The Nature of Laws’) made roughly
similar proposals at about the same time as Armstrong.)
In the years since Armstrong’s book, many philosophers have investi-
gated how Lewis’s view of laws as arising ‘from below’, supervening on
the global spacetime mosaic of instantiations of certain fundamental prop-
erties, contrasts with Armstrong’s view of laws as governing the universe
‘from above’ so that two possible universes may differ in their laws
despite having exactly the same global property mosaic. Philosophers
have also followed Armstrong in investigating which view best accounts
for the laws’ relations to inductive confirmation, natural necessity, coun-
terfactual conditionals, and scientific explanations. Philosophers have
xi
xii
explored whether the virtues that Armstrong attributes to his own view
are more fully realized by accounts according to which the laws are
metaphysically necessary rather than contingent (see, for example, Bird’s
Nature’s Metaphysics) or according to which counterfactuals sustain laws
rather than the reverse (Lange, Laws and Lawmakers). Armstrong’s book
has been enormously influential in deepening the philosophical investi-
gation of natural lawhood – research that continues vigorously today.
What is a Law of Nature? is a rare achievement: not only a pungently
written, accessible, opinionated introduction, but also a cutting-edge con-
tribution to philosophy. Let us go on learning from it!
Acknowledgements
B
I am conscious of great debts to many people in the composition of this
work. I would like to thank John Bacon, Michael Bradley, Gregory Currie,
Peter Forrest, Laurence Goldstein, Herbert Hochberg, Frank Jackson,
Bruce Langtry, David Lewis, Chris Mortensen, Len O’Neill, David San-
ford, Jack Smart, David Stove, Richard Swinburne, Chris Swoyer, Martin
Tweedale, Peter Van Inwagen, and John Watkins. I hope that I have not
left anybody out. Specific acknowledgements on particular points are
made in the text. But I have received so much valuable comment that
I know that there is some of it which I have failed to assimilate and profit
from. I have also learnt a great deal from my students in the course of
giving seminars on the Laws of Nature at the University of Sydney and the
University of Texas at Austin. I should like to thank Anthea Bankoff, Pat
Trifonoff, and Jackie Walter for much typing and retyping of drafts.
I leave to the last mention of my quite special debt to Michael Tooley. As
I hope that the text makes clear, he has everywhere influenced my think-
ing on this thorny and difficult topic of the nature of the laws of nature.
Sydney University D. M. A.
1982
xiii
PART I
A critique of the Regularity theory
1
Introductory
B
1 The importance of our topic
The question ‘What is a law of nature?’ is a central question for the
philosophy of science. But its importance goes beyond this relatively
restricted context to embrace general epistemology and metaphysics. In
this section I will first discuss the importance of the question for the
philosophy of science and then its importance in the wider context.
Natural science traditionally concerns itself with at least three tasks. The
first is to discover the geography and history of the universe, taking
‘geography’ to cover all space and ‘history’ to cover all time, including
future time. Astronomy is beginning to give us a picture of how the
universe as a whole is laid out in space and time. Some other natural
sciences give us an overview of more restricted spatio-temporal areas.
A second task is to discover what sorts of thing and what sorts of
property there are in the universe and how they are constituted, with
particular emphasis upon the sorts of thing and the sorts of property in
terms of which other things are explained. (These explainers may or may
not be ultimate explainers.)
The third task is to state the laws which the things in space and time
obey. Or, putting it in the terms used in describing the second task, the
third task is to state the laws which link sort of thing with sort of thing,
and property with property.
It may not be obvious that there is a second task to be distinguished
from the third. But consider the scientific discovery that heat is molecular
motion. It is obvious that this is not a historical/geographical truth. I shall
argue at a later point that it is not a law of nature, even a ‘bridge law’
(Ch. 10, Sec. 1). It is something different: it gives the constitution of a
property, or range of properties, in terms of more ultimate properties.
(It could be said to give the ‘geography’ of a property.)
What is true is that the three enquiries are inextricably bound up
with each other. They logically presuppose each other and can only be
3
4
there are regularities in the world, there are no laws of nature. Such a view
agrees with critics of the Regularity theory of law that mere regularities are
insufficient for law. But, in Eliminativist spirit, it goes on to deny that the
world contains anything except these regularities. This Disappearance
view of law can nevertheless maintain that inferences to the unobserved
are reliable, because, although the world is not law-governed, it is, by luck
or for some other reason, regular.
Such a view, however, will have to face the question what good reason
we can have to think that the world is regular. It will have to face the
Problem of Induction. It will be argued in Chapter 4, Section 5, that no
Regularity theorist, whether or not he is prepared to call his regularities
‘laws’, can escape inductive scepticism.
3 Assumptions
Some of the presuppositions of this enquiry have already emerged. In this
section I will mention three further assumptions that I will make. I hope
that they will not remain assumptions merely, but that some consider-
ations in their favour will emerge in the course of the discussion. But since
they are rather fundamental, and so not easily argued for, and since they
are also somewhat controversial, it seems desirable to put them explicitly
before the reader.
First, I assume the truth of a Realistic account of laws of nature. That is
to say, I assume that they exist independently of the minds which attempt
to grasp them. (Just what sort of thing they are, it is the task of this essay to
investigate. It is clear, simply from considering the typical forms of law-
statements, that a law is some sort of complex entity.) Laws of nature must
therefore be sharply distinguished from law-statements. Law-statements
may be true or (much more likely) false. If they are true, then what makes
them true is a law.
The task of the critic of anti-Realist views of laws has been greatly eased
by the recent publication of a fine and scholarly article by Alan Musgrave
(1981). What he offers is primarily a critique of Wittgensteinian Instru-
mentalism about laws, as it is found in the Tractatus, and in Wittgenstein’s
followers W. H. Watson, Toulmin, Hanson and Harré. But there is also
useful criticism of other anti-Realist positions.
In any case, however, behind all anti-Realist views of laws stands the
Regularity theory. After all, those who do not take a Realistic view of laws
have to allow that there is some foundation in the world for the
1 It may be argued that both (2) and (3) can be reduced to form (1). My reasons for rejecting
both these reductions will emerge. See Ch. 3, Sec. 4 for (2) and Ch. 7 for (3).
8
necessity involved in laws. For dispositions and powers, if they are con-
ceived of as the non-Actualist conceives them, involve logical or quasi-
logical connections in the world between the dispositions and powers, on
the one hand, and their actualizations on the other.
B
Laws of nature characteristically manifest themselves or issue in regular-
ities. It is natural, therefore, in Ockhamist spirit, to consider whether laws
are anything more than these manifestations.
When philosophers hear the phrase ‘Regularity theory’ they are inclined
almost automatically to think of a Regularity theory of causation. It is
important, therefore, to be clear at the outset that what is being considered
here is a Regularity theory of laws.
The Regularity theory of causation appears to be a conjunction of two
propositions: (1) that causal connection is a species of law-like connection;
(2) that laws are nothing but regularities in the behaviour of things. It is
possible to deny the truth of (1), as Singularist theories of causation do,
and then go on either to assert or to deny the truth of (2). Alternatively, (1)
can be upheld, and either (2) asserted (yielding the Regularity theory of
causation), or (2) denied. The reduction of cause to law, and the reduction
of law to regularity, are two independent doctrines. They can be accepted
or rejected independently.
It therefore appears that the Regularity theory of causation entails the
Regularity theory of laws of nature, because the latter theory is a proper
part of the former. By the same token, the Regularity theory of laws of
nature fails to entail the Regularity theory of causation. Our concern is
with the Regularity theory of law.
There is much in this definition which could be discussed, but which I pass
over for the present. I think it will serve our current purposes. It is easy to
see the aim of the definition: to pick out the unrestricted or cosmic uniform-
ities from all other uniformities in nature. I will call them Humean uni-
formities, for obvious reasons. These Humean uniformities the Naive
Regularity theory identifies with the laws of nature.
1 David Lewis has pointed out to me that the bracketed phrase is redundant.
12
there appear to be, Humean uniformities which are not laws of nature.
That is, being a Humean uniformity is not sufficient for being a law of
nature. Again there are, or at least there could be, laws which do not hold
over all space and time. There are also probabilistic laws. Neither of these
sorts of law involve Humean uniformities.2 That is, being a Humean
uniformity is not necessary for a law of nature. The failure of sufficiency
will be the subject of this chapter, the failure of necessity the subject in the
earlier sections of the next chapter.
Even if all these difficulties can be overcome, and I do not believe that
they can be, plenty of difficulties remain for the Regularity theory of laws.
That theory envisages a very simple relationship between a law and its
associated Humean uniformity. It is a law that Fs are Gs if and only if all Fs
are Gs, where the latter is a Humean uniformity. The content of the law
and the content of the uniformity are identical. However, there appear to
be cases where a law and its manifestation are not related in this straight-
forward way. A gap can open up between law and manifestation of law.
Two sorts of case will be discussed in the last two sections of the next
chapter, involving probabilistic and functional laws.
Finally, there are what might be called ‘intensional’ difficulties. Sup-
pose that there is a Humean uniformity to which a law does correspond,
and suppose that the content of the uniformity is the same as the content
of the law. Even so, there are a number of reasons for thinking that the
law and the uniformity are not identical. For the law has properties
which the manifestation lacks. These difficulties will be discussed in
Chapter 4.
In Chapter 5 we will consider attempts to meet some of these difficulties
by sophisticating the Naive Regularity theory. The failure of these sophis-
ticating attempts should leave us intellectually and psychologically well
prepared to look for a replacement for the Regularity theory.
3 Single-case uniformities
It has long been recognized, even by Regularity theorists themselves,
that the laws of nature are, at best, a mere sub-class of the class of
Humean uniformities. A recognized research programme for contem-
porary Regularity theorists is to find a way to cut out unwanted
Humean uniformities while still remaining faithful to the spirit of the
2 Although we shall see that there is a strategy which attempts to reinterpret probabilistic
laws as a special sort of uniformity.
13