Causal powers as metaphysical grounds for laws or nature

Journal title EPISTEMOLOGIA
Author/s Michael Ghins
Publishing Year 2015 Issue 2014/2 Language English
Pages 19 P. 183-201 File size 138 KB
DOI 10.3280/EPIS2014-002001
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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.

Keywords: Van Fraassen, identification, inference, regularism, necessitarism, neo-Aristotelian necessitarism, dispositions, causal powers, reguliarities, counterfactual conditionals.

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Michael Ghins, Causal powers as metaphysical grounds for laws or nature in "EPISTEMOLOGIA" 2/2014, pp 183-201, DOI: 10.3280/EPIS2014-002001