Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T17:19:37.968Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Herbert Hochberg
Herbert Hochberg*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Texas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The paper considers recent proposals by Armstrong, Dretske, and Tooley that revive the view that statements of laws of nature are grounded by the existence of higher order facts relating universale. Several objections to such a view are raised and an alternative analysis, recognizing general facts, is considered. Such an alternative is shown to meet a number of the objections raised against the appeal to higher order facts and it is also related to views of Hume and Wittgenstein. Further objections are then raised to all the non-Humean “realist” attempts to provide special facts to ground the laws of nature.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 1981 , pp. 386 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Armstrong, D. M. (1978), A Theory of Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bergmann, Gustav (1949), “On Non-Perceptual Intuition”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research X, 2: 263–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dretske, Fred I. (1977), “Laws of Nature”, Philosophy of Science 44: 248–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausman, Alan (1967), “Hume's Theory of Relations”, NoÛs 1, 3: 255–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochberg, Herbert (1971), “Facts, Possibilities and Essences in the Tractatus“, Essays on Wittgenstein Klemke, E. D. (ed.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press: 485–533.Google Scholar
Hochberg, Herbert (1977), “Properties, Abstracts, and the Axiom of Infinity”, Journal of Philosophical Logic 6: 193–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochberg, Herbert (1978), Thought, Fact, and Reference. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Tooley, Michael (1977), “The Nature of Laws”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy VII, 4: 667–698.CrossRefGoogle Scholar