By contrast, the constant conjunction definition promotes the view that laws are to be analyzed in terms of the de re characteristics of regularities, independently of the attitudes and actions of actual or potential knowers. Lawfulness is a matter of imputation” (1970, p. And in a similar vein, Rescher maintains that lawfulness is “mind-dependent” it is not something which is discovered but which is supplied: “Lawfulness is not found in or extracted from the evidence but superadded to it. In “What is a law of nature?”, Ayer explains that the difference between ‘generalizations of fact’ and ‘generalizations of law’ “lies not so much on the side of facts which make them true, as in the attitude of those who put them forward” (1956, p. Considered solely in its own right, the contention that classical me-chanics is 'really indeterministic' would be merely a novelty, albeit a startling one-like the discovery that Stegosaurus had multiple rows of armor. In Fact, Fiction and Forecast Goodman writes: “I want to emphasize the Humean idea that rather than a sentence being used for prediction because it is a law, it is called a law because it is used for prediction” (1955, p. JOHN EARMANS A PRIMER ON DETERMINISM 503 contrary to expectation, provide a 'hospitable home for determinism'. Latter day weavers of this strand include Nelson Goodman, A. Corresponding to the felt determination definition is the account of laws that emphasizes human attitudes, beliefs, and actions. The two principal definitions (constant conjunction, felt determination) provide the anchors for the two main strands of the modem empiricist accounts of laws of nature 1 while the third (the counter factual definition 2) may be seen as the inspiration of the nonHumean necessitarian analyses.
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