Abstract

Laws of nature have, since Descartes, been seen as a central feature of scientific inquiry and philosophical analysis. The standard empiricist analysis of laws has come under challenge by realists, like Armstrong, who believe the analysis leaves out important features we intuitively ascribe to laws , and by antirealists like van Fraassen who believe the very notion ensnares us in metaphysics. In my dissertation, I defend the view against both the realists and van Fraassen that an empirically respectable notion of scientific law is available within the framework of pragmatism, which relativizes lawhood to the choice of a language and a set of experimental manipulations. ;In chapter one, I argue that the philosophical problem of scientific laws has a long history, and that van Fraassen has picked out some tensions between views in that history. In chapter two, I analyze and criticize three realists' views and show that they have a flawed common strategy based on incompatible presuppositions. In chapter three, I argue for my own view, a pragmatist view that builds on the work of Dewey, Nagel, Goodman and Skyrms. I argue that replicability is the source of our confidence that regularities are projectible and resilient , and that this is the source of our confident assertion of counterfactuals, our belief in the necessary connection between events, and our belief that laws are empirically accessible. In chapter four, I answer objections from the realists, from van Fraassen and from those constructivists who find too much residual realism in my view. I there defend the view that one can have objectivity without being a realist, and relativity without being a relativist