View full metadata
THIS DOI METADATA WAS LAST UPDATED: 2024-01-10 22:54
Cite as
-
Full Title
EPISTEMOLOGIA
-
Publisher
FrancoAngeli
-
ISSN
0392-9760 (Printed Journal)
1825-652X (Online Journal)
-
Journal Issue Number
2
-
Journal Issue Designation
2
-
Journal Issue Date (YYYY/MM)
2015/02
-
Full Title
Causal powers as metaphysical grounds for laws or nature
-
By (author)
-
First Page
183
-
Last Page
201
-
Language of text
English
-
Publication Date
2015/02
-
Copyright
2014 FrancoAngeli srl
Introduction or preface
As Bas van Fraassen clearly put it in his Laws and Symmetry (1989), any adequate philosophical account of laws of nature must at least solve two main problems: the problem of identification and the problem of inference. After a short presentation of these two problems and a brief survey of several, in my view unsuccessful, regularist and necessitarian philosophical attempts solve them, a neo-Aristotelian necessitarian account of laws is offered, which resorts to dispositions or causal powers, and which provides an attractive solution to the two problems raised by van Fraassen. Such neo-Aristotelian account also explains why there are regularities in nature and why laws support the truth of counterfactual conditionals. The papers ends with a succinct discussion of the connection of dispositions with experience.
Reference list of
10.3280/EPIS2014-002001
Unstructured Citation
Armstrong D. (1983). What is a Law of Nature? Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139171700
Unstructured Citation
Bigelow J.C., Ellis B., Lierse C. (1992). The World as One of Kind: Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 43, pp. 371-388.
Unstructured Citation
Bird A. (2007). Nature’s Metaphysics. Laws and Properties, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Blondeau J., Ghins M. (2012). Is There an Intrinsic Criterion for Causal Lawlike Statements? International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 26, pp. 381-401.
Unstructured Citation
Ellis B. (2001). Scientific Essentialism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Unstructured Citation
Ellis B. (2002). The Philosophy of Nature, Chesham, Acumen.
Unstructured Citation
Ghins M. (2010). Bas van Fraassen on Scientific Representation, Analysis, 70, pp. 524-536.
Unstructured Citation
Ghins M. (2013a). Uma Introdução à Filosofia da Natureza. Representação, realismo e leis
Unstructured Citation
científicas. Editora da Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil. (French version forthcoming).
Unstructured Citation
Ghins M. (2013b). Semirealism, Concrete Structures and Theory Change, Erkenntnis, 78, pp. 19-27.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-012-9416-1
Unstructured Citation
Lewis D. (1973). Counterfactuals, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press.
Unstructured Citation
Mumford S. (1998). Dispositions, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Unstructured Citation
Mumford S. (2004). Laws in Nature, Abingdon, Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203458426
Unstructured Citation
Psillos S. (2011). Moving Molecules Above the Scientific Horizon: On Perrin’s Case for Realism, Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 42, pp. 339-363.
Unstructured Citation
van Fraassen B. (1980). The Scientific Image, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/0198244274.001.0001
Unstructured Citation
van Fraassen B. (1989). Laws and Symmetry, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/0198248601.001.0001
Unstructured Citation
van Fraassen B. (2000). Michel Ghins on the Empirical Versus the Theoretical, Foundations of Physics, 30, pp. 1643-1655
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026498100498