Abstract

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.