Abstract
One of the traditional desiderata for a metaphysical theory of laws of nature is that it be able to explain natural regularities. Some philosophers have postulated governing laws to fill this explanatory role. Recently, however, many have attempted to explain natural regularities without appealing to governing laws. Suppose that some fundamental properties are bare dispositions. In virtue of their dispositional nature, these properties must be (or are likely to be) distributed in regular patterns. Thus it would appear that an ontology including bare dispositions can dispense with governing laws of nature. I believe that there is a problem with this line of reasoning. In this essay, I’ll argue that governing laws are indispensable for the explanation of a special sort of natural regularity: those holding among categorical properties (or, as I’ll call them, categorical regularities). This has the potential to be a serious objection to the denial of governing laws, since there may be good reasons to believe that observed regularities are categorical regularities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Ellis’s and Bird’s version is often called dispositional essentialism.
The formula at the end is read as ‘necessarily, for all x, if x has D then x would attain M if it were in conditions C’. My statement of this principle is a slight adaptation from the definition of Entailment found in Choi and Fara (2012). Mumford (1998), Ellis (2001), and Bird (2007) are recent proponents of Descriptive Non-Humeanism who have endorsed something like the entailment principle for distinguishing dispositions from categorical properties.
This definition may be problematic, because failing to satisfy D in virtue of intrinsic nature may be necessary but insufficient for being a categorical property. However, the arguments of this paper are consistent with all of the standard definitions of categorical properties, so I’ll ignore this issue here.
Bare dispositionalism would be consistent with Humeanism if we did not stipulate that D, C, and M are distinct sparse natural properties. But in that case, the sense in which bare dispositions are “bare” wouldn’t be interesting—the modal connection involved in Humean dispositions would be fully reducible—and they would lose their explanatory power over natural regularities. See Foster (1983), Fales (1990, Chapter 4), and Bird (2007, pp. 86–90) for arguments for the explanatory weakness of Humeanism.
See Lange (2009) for an account of laws in terms of bare subjunctives. Classifying this type of theory into my framework is somewhat tricky. I’m inclined to think that if the subjunctives are used for the purposes of property individuation (e.g., “such and such objects are of the same kind because the same subjunctives are true of them”) then it counts as a version of Descriptive Non-Humeanism and will be subject to the arguments of this essay. On the other hand, if we have an independent means of individuating properties—say, one that gets us categorical properties—and we think that bare subjunctives are necessarily true of these independently individuated properties, then this theory would be classified as a version of Governing Laws. In this case, it bears obvious similarities to the version of Governing Laws endorsed by Carroll (1994) and Maudlin (2007). See Hildebrand (forthcoming) for a criticism of the explanatory power of that view.
If, like Cartwright (1983), one doubts whether there are any regularities described by straightforward universal generalizations, one can move to more subtle descriptions of the regularities. An anonymous referee helpfully noted that this may be an advantageous feature of Descriptive Non-Humeanism. It can countenance laws having subtle forms by building exceptions to regularities into the dispositions themselves.
Teaser: The argument is a close relative of Hume’s argument for the unobservability of causal relations. One can generalize Hume’s argument to argue that all synthetic modality is unobservable, and therefore that bare dispositions are unobservable properties. From this it follows that observable regularities are categorical regularities.
I thank an anonymous referee from Philosophical Studies for suggesting that I consider this option carefully.
Drewery (2005, pp. 385–386) suggests that positing kind essences is equivalent to positing governing laws. (I’ll have more to say about this later.) Also, the proposal under consideration is closely related to Tooley’s (1987, pp. 123–129) suggestion that we reduce the necessity involved in governing laws in terms of conjunctive universals. Sider (1992) and Hildebrand (2012) have argued that Tooley’s proposal fails in its attempt to reduce the necessity, with the result that this proposal introduces a new modal primitive.
If this sounds counterintuitive, that may be because the strategy considered here is closely connected to C.B. Martin’s proposal (see his contributions to Armstrong et al. 1996) that all properties have both dispositional and categorical “aspects,” and thus that there are no categorical properties as I have defined them. This is simply to deny the guiding assumption of this essay, so I will not further explore this option here.
See Beebee (2011, pp. 518–526) for further epistemological difficulties with this proposal.
I am indebted to an anonymous referee from The Philosophical Quarterly for suggesting this strategy.
The same problem arises for dependence relations stronger than supervenience.
I thank an anonymous referee from Philosophical Studies for suggesting this option.
Disclaimer: Obviously, this discussion has been brief. It may be that natural kind essentialists can brand their theory in such a way that it does not satisfy Governing Laws. One option would be to identify a concept of the distinctness of governing law and regularity according to which natural kind essences aren’t distinct from the regularities that involve them. However, I know of no plausible candidates, so I won’t pursue this matter here.
References
Armstrong, D. (1983). What is a law of nature?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Armstrong, D., Martin, C. B., & Place, U. T. (1996). In T. Crane (Ed.), Dispositions: A debate. New York: Routledge.
Beebee, H. (2000). The non-governing conception of laws of nature. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 61(3), 571–594.
Beebee, H. (2011). Necessary connections and the problem of induction. Nous, 45(3), 504–527.
Bird, A. (2005). The ultimate argument against Armstrong’s contingent necessitation view of laws. Analysis, 65, 147–155.
Bird, A. (2007). Nature’s metaphysics: Dispositions, laws and properties. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carroll, J. (1994). Laws of nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cartwright, N. (1983). How the laws of physics lie. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Choi, S., & Fara, M. (2012). Dispositions. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 ed.). Stanford: Stanford University.
Dretske, F. (1977). Laws of nature. Philosophy of Science, 44(2), 248–268.
Drewery, A. (2005). Essentialism and the necessity of the laws of nature. Synthese, 144, 381–396.
Earman, J., & Roberts, J. T. (2005a). Contact with the nomic: A challenge for deniers of Humean supervenience about laws of nature part i: Humean supervenience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 71(1), 1–22.
Earman, J., & Roberts, J. T. (2005b). Contact with the nomic: A challenge for deniers of Humean supervenience about laws of nature part II: The epistemological argument for Humean supervenience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 71(2), 253–286.
Ellis, B. (2001). Scientific essentialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ellis, B. (2009). The metaphysics of scientific realism. Ithaca, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Fales, E. (1990). Causation and universals. New York: Routledge.
Foster, J. (1982–1983). Induction, explanation, and natural necessity. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 83, 87–101.
Handfield, T. (2005). Armstrong and the modal inversion of dispositions. Philosophical Quarterly, 55, 452–461.
Hildebrand, T. (2012). Tooley’s account of the necessary connection between law and regularity. Philosophical Studies. doi:10.1007/s11098-012-0023-4.
Hildebrand, T. (forthcoming). Can primitive laws explain? Philosophers’ Imprint.
Lange, M. (2009). Laws and lawmakers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. (1973). Counterfactuals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lewis, D. (1994). Humean supervenience debugged. Mind, 412, 473–490.
Loewer, B. (1996). Humean supervenience. Philosophical Topics, 24, 101–127.
Lowe, E. (1989). Kinds of being. New York: Basil Blackwell.
Lowe, E. (2006). The four-category ontology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Maudlin, T. (2007). The metaphysics within physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mellor, D. (1974). In defense of dispositions. The Philosophical Review, 83, 157–181.
Mumford, S. (1998). Dispositions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mumford, S. (2004). Laws in nature. London: Routledge.
Mumford, S. (2005). Kinds, essences, powers. Ratio, 18(4), 420–436.
Oderberg, D. S. (2007). Real essentialism. New York: Routledge.
Prior, E. (1985). Dispositions. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Schaffer, J. (2009). Causation and laws of nature. In T. Sider, J. Hawthorne, & D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Contemporary debates in metaphysics (pp. 82–107). Oxford: Blackwell.
Shoemaker, S. (1980). Causality and properties. In P. van Inwagen (Ed.), Time and cause (pp. 109–135). Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Sider, T. (1992). Tooley’s solution to the inference problem. Philosophical Studies, 67, 261–275.
Tooley, M. (1977). The nature of laws. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 7(4), 667–698.
Tooley, M. (1987). Causation: A realist approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Van Fraassen, B. (1989). Laws and symmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Graeme Forbes, Michaela McSweeney, Noël Saenz, Michael Tooley, Chad Vance, and anonymous referees from Philosophical Studies and The Philosophical Quarterly for valuable comments, criticisms, and suggestions. I would also like to thank audiences at the 2011 Society for Exact Philosophy conference and the 2011 Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association for helpful discussion.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hildebrand, T. Can bare dispositions explain categorical regularities?. Philos Stud 167, 569–584 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0113-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0113-y