What Are the Laws of Nature in Philosophy

Causality: counterfactual theories of | Causality: the metaphysics of | Conditions | Conditions: counterfactual | Determinism: | causal Provisions | Hempel, Carl | Hume, David | Induction: | problem Natural laws: ceteris paribus | Lewis, David | Lewis, David: Metaphysics | Metaphysics | Models in | science Possible worlds| Probability, interpretations of | Real Estate | Scientific explanation| Two reasons can be given for believing that a law does not depend on a necessary connection between properties. The first reason is the ability to think that it is a law in one possible world that all F`s are G, although there is another world with an F that is not G. The second is that there are laws that can only be discovered a posteriori. If necessity is always linked to the laws of nature, then it is not clear why scientists cannot always cope with a priori methods. Of course, both of these reasons are often questioned. Maintainers argue that thinkability is not a guide to possibility. They also refer to the arguments of Saul Kripke (1972), which seek to reveal certain a posteriori truths necessary to maintain that the a posteriori character of certain laws does not prevent their regularity from requiring a necessary link between properties. To further support their own view, the Needers argue that their position is a consequence of their preferred disposition theory, according to which provisions essentially have their causal powers. For example, in this theory, the prosecution, as part of its essence, has the power to ward off similar accusations. Laws are thus caused by the nature of the provisions (cf. Bird 2005, 356).

Depending on necessity, it is also a virtue of their position that they can explain why laws are counterfactually favourable; they support counterfeits in the same way as other necessary truths (Swoyer 1982, 209; Fales 1990, 85-87). The laws of nature are very different from the laws of man. While the laws of man seek to order and control individual and social behavior to make community life less risky, the laws of nature are derived from the long-term observation of reproducible patterns and tendencies. While the laws of man may vary from culture to culture because they are based on moral values lacking universal norms, the laws of nature aim at universality, to reveal behaviors that are true – in the sense of verifiable – across time and space. Thus, while some cultural trends accepted in one group may seem barbaric to others (such as female circumcision), stars in the universe have been burning according to the same rules since their appearance about 200 million years after the Big Bang. While in some countries the death penalty is abhorrent and in others it is carried out with almost fanatical forces, atoms and molecules on billions of planets and moons in this and other galaxies combine in chemical reactions that follow patterns of order based on well-defined laws of preservation. of attraction and repulsion. The second major type of theory of necessity states that laws are derived from the causal forces (dispositions and inclinations) of objects. The possession of such powers by natural types of objects (e.g., elementary particles, chemical elements) causes their wearers to behave in certain ways or to illustrate other characteristic properties. For this reason, most properties – and especially those of fundamental objects – are ultimately dispositional in nature.

For example, the electric charge that the electron possesses makes it interact with the electromagnetic field in a certain way. Natural laws, for this reason, simply codify the natural behavior of things forced by their intrinsic causal forces. In addition, natural species essentially possess their dispositional properties: nothing counts as an electron unless it has a unit of electric charge, a certain mass, a spin 1/2 and perhaps other essential properties of disposition. The main difference of this report from the view of relations between universals is to blur the line between what things are and how they behave. According to the first view, all electrons have a certain charge due to the relationship between the two universals: the electron tree and a certain charge.