Laws, Exceptions and Dispositions

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_3127
dc.title	Laws, Exceptions and Dispositions
dc.contributor.author	Kistler Max
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/the-journal-for-the-philosophy-of-language-mind-an/2020/1/laws-exceptions-and-dispositions/
dc.description.abstract	Can laws of nature be universal regularities and nevertheless have exceptions? Several answers to this question, in particular the thesis that there are no laws outside of fundamental physics, are examined and rejected. It is suggested that one can account for exceptions by conceiving of laws as strictly universal determination relations between (instances of) properties. When a natural property is instantiated, laws of nature give rise to other, typically dispositional properties. In exceptional situations, such properties manifest themselves either in an unusual way or not at all.
dc.relation.ispartof	JoLMA
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 1 \| Issue 1 \| June 2020
dc.issued	2020-06-30
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2723-9640
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/Jolma//2020/01/004
dc.peer-review	no
dc.subject	Ceteris paribus
dc.subject	Ceteris paribus
dc.subject	Disposition
dc.subject	Disposition
dc.subject	Exception
dc.subject	Exception
dc.subject	Law of nature
dc.subject	Law of nature
dc.subject	Proviso
dc.subject	Proviso

Research Article
open access

Max Kistler Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France

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abstract

Can laws of nature be universal regularities and nevertheless have exceptions? Several answers to this question, in particular the thesis that there are no laws outside of fundamental physics, are examined and rejected. It is suggested that one can account for exceptions by conceiving of laws as strictly universal determination relations between (instances of) properties. When a natural property is instantiated, laws of nature give rise to other, typically dispositional properties. In exceptional situations, such properties manifest themselves either in an unusual way or not at all.

Published

June 30, 2020

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Keywords: Law of nature • Exception • Ceteris paribus • Proviso • Disposition

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Jolma//2020/01/004

Copyright: © 2020 Max Kistler. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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