Natural Laws as Dispositions

The book provides a novel account of laws of nature via dispositions. Laws of nature play a paramount role in philosophy, science and everyday life. Understanding laws of nature is philosophically interesting on its own right but also many important notions belonging to philosophy of science, like causation, prediction and explanation, are intimately related to the laws of nature.

The book outlines the alleged characteristics of the laws of nature and introduces the main families of theories of laws of nature - neo-humean, ADT and dispositional theories. It then develops an account of dispositions the `triadic process picture of dispositions' (TPD) and applies it to the debate about laws of nature. Finally, the (TPD) account of the necessity of the laws of nature is presented: laws of nature are naturally necessary and metaphysically contingent.

Thus the book provides an introduction to the debates about laws of nature as well as dispositions, while at the same time developing a novel theory and thus is interesting for the beginner as well as expert in these fields.

Auteur

Florian Fischer, University of Bonn, Germany.