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Social Identity is the way that one identifies with himself in relation to his memberships to various social groups, and the value of being in that group ( - "Social comparison": when one weighs the pros and cons of being in his own group [ingroup] and another group [outgroup] )

Individuals try to maintain a positive self-image and self-esteem. The groups that they belong in, and the social comparisons of the groups and other groups will affect how the individual values himself. To protect oneself from low self-esteem (which would arise from being in a group with little advantages,) the individual may express ingroup favoritism, and a pattern of discrimination with the outgroup.

= When a social comparison results in a positive outcome for the individual's ingroup, the need for a positive social identity is fulfilled. However, if the outcome is negative, this could result in low self-esteem, shame, embarrassment, etc.

Cialdini et al (1976): College students were more likely to wear school gear (hats, sweaters, shirts) when their football team wins a match. This is mostly likely due to the students' need for a positive self-concept / self-image. The positive self-image brought on by winning a game can result in bias and predilection for ingroups, and all the things the ingroup represents.

Intergroup discrimination can be a way to uphold a positive social identity for an ingroup.

Tajfel (1970) Experiment in intergroup discrimination: minimal group paradigm

Aim: to see if boys who were randomly placed in groups based on a meaningless task would display ingroup favoritism and intergroup discrimination.

Experiment 1: 64 schoolboys of ages 14 to 15 were invited to a psychology laboratory in groups of eight. The boys all knew each other well. Boys were seen moving clusters on a computer screen, and were told to estimate the number of dots that were in each cluster. Boys were then randomly assigned to groups such as "over-estimator" and "under-estimator". Then, boys had to hand out money to the other boys in the experiment. All the boys knew was whether the other boy was in or not in his own group.

Experiment 2: boys were randomly allocated into groups according to which artist's art they liked better. The boys then had to award money to other boys.

Results: boys gave more money to members in their own category (i.e. boys that were in the ingroup). In the second experiment, the boys tried to maximise the difference between the two groups. Both experiments indicate ingroup favoritism which supports the predictions of the social identity theory.

Evaluate: results contributed to the development of the social identity theory. Tajfel demonstrated that a minimal group is all that is necessary for individuals to exhibit discrimination against outgroups. This experiment was criticised for being too artificial, and having demand characteristics. Boys might have thought the task was competitive, which caused them to react the way that they did (i.e. exhibit ingroup favoritism and discriminate between the outgroup).This study also established that intergroup conflict is not necessary to create induce ingroup favoritism.

Social identity theory has contributed to explaining how stereotypes, prejudices and conformity to ingroup norms have occurred.

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Social Identity is the way that one identifies with himself in relation to his memberships to various social groups, and the value of being in that group ( - "Social comparison": when one weighs the pros and cons of being in his own group [ingroup] and another group [outgroup] ) Individuals try to maintain a positive self-image and self-esteem.

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If two lines are parallel, can they intersect?

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Kognity- Psychology--> Uniforfmity within changes in relationship

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Kognity- Psychology--> Uniforfmity within changes in relationship

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Peano axioms: Peano axioms, in number theory, five axioms introduced in 1889 by Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano. Like the axioms for geometry devised by Greek mathematician Euclid (c. 300 bce), the Peano axioms were meant to provide a rigorous foundation for the natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3,...) used in

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Peano's Axioms -- from Wolfram MathWorld

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Definition of Ceteris Paribus

To understand the law of demand, the law of supply, and many other important economic concepts, it's important that you first understand the term ceteris paribus. Ceteris paribus is the commonly used Latin phrase meaning 'all other things remaining constant.' When using ceteris paribus in economics, it is often safe to assume that all other variables, except those under immediate consideration, are held constant.

Why Is It Important in Economics?

The concept of ceteris paribus is important in economics because, in the real world, it's usually hard to isolate all the different variables that may influence or change the outcome of what you are studying and how an individual might make a decision. It's used in economics to rule out the possibility of other factors changing, which may have an impact on the outcome or decision-making process of individuals.

For example, in economics, we may say that an increase in the price of beef will decrease the quantity demanded for beef. We often add the phrase or assume, 'all else constant,' at the end. Why, you might ask? We know from the law of demand that if the price of beef goes up, less beef will be demanded, all else constant. Now assume we take away the phrase, 'all else constant.' It now becomes extremely difficult to study the relationship between price and quantity demanded. We open up the entire world to known and unknown factors that may also affect the demand for beef.

What if the price of pork or chicken went down? Would some people buy less beef and substitute more pork and chicken? Certainly. What if a new study came out linking red meat to high rates of cancer or diabetes? Could that alone affect the demand for beef? Certainly. How about if the beef industry simply increased advertisements about the benefits of eating red meat? Could a large population increase affect the price and demand for beef? Again, the answers are: certainly!

I give you all of those other possibilities to show you that if you don't include or assume the phrase, 'all else constant,' in economics, it can be almost impossible to identify the true effect of one variable on another. Or, in this case, the simple relationship between a price change for beef and the corresponding change in quantity demanded for beef.

In the real world, it may be a combination of several things affecting the demand for beef. But to understand the influence of each one of those factors on price or quantity demanded, we must ignore all the other possibilities. It's only then that we can see how each variable affects the other without interference of other outside forces.

Examples of Ceteris Paribus

Let's look at a few examples to really drive home the importance of ceteris paribus, 'all else constant.' Say over a period of five years, the price of automobiles rises and so does the number of vehicles sold. That seems to violate the law of demand. The law of demand would have us believe that if the price of automobiles rose, the number of vehicles sold should have decreased.

If we look at the data more closely, we may find that the average income of individuals rose 15% during that same time frame. As income increases, people ultimately buy more cars, and the demand for cars increases. The increase in price would have resulted in less cars being purchased, but income didn't remain constant. Simply put, the increase in income, which caused an increase in demand for cars, outweighed the effect of the price increase and decrease in quantity demanded. If we want to study the effect of price alone, we must hold income and all other variables constant.

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the concept of ceteris paribus in economics - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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The Concept of Ceteris Paribus in Economics - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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To understand the law of demand, the law of supply, and many other important economic concepts, it's important that you first understand the term ceteris paribus. Ceteris paribus is the commonly used Latin phrase meaning 'all other things remaining constant.'

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Euclidean geometry: Euclidean geometry, the study of plane and solid figures on the basis of axioms and theorems employed by the Greek mathematician Euclid (c. 300 bce). In its rough outline, Euclidean geometry is the plane and solid geometry commonly taught in secondary schools.

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What are the aims of the human sciences?

The aims of virtually all the human sciences are the same: to explain human behaviour, formulate theories to predict it, and then develop remedies for the problems identified by those predictions. A more cynical way of looking at it would be to say that human scientists try to manipulate the behaviour of others for their own benefit; an even darker outlook – as portrayed in novels such as Brave New World and 1984 – would be the view that human scientists try to modify and control the way we are. Perhaps such views are not always so far fetched: one only needs to watch a presidential election to see how speech writers and political advisors seek to persuade their audiences, and there are many examples from history (if not the contemporary world) of regimes whose laws amount to a set of rules for the way people can and cannot behave and even think.

Perhaps we should try not to be so cynical yet. There are few people who begin a study of sociology with the intention of taking over the world. The first objective is to explain human behaviour, and just as in natural sciences, the first way of doing this is to ask the question why? What causes us to behave in the way we do, and what causes human phenomena to occur?

Causation and Correlation

But figuring out the cause of a thing can be deeply problematic, just as it can be in natural sciences. In particular, how do we discern between factors that actually CAUSE something to occur, and factors that are simply coincidental or CORRELATE? In other words, we need to make sure we aren't fooled by the fallacies of eithercum hoc ergo propter hoc ('with this, therefore, because of this') or post hoc ergo propter hoc('after this, therefore because of this'). In other words, assuming that one event is caused by another, just because it happened at the same time or afterwards.

Because of the nature of human sciences, the difficulty of discerning correlation from causation can be even trickier than in the natural sciences. This is because of the extra number of variables, and the way correlation is seized on even more eagerly by researchers or the press in order to explain some long-hidden mystery that has always eluded human beings. To give a few examples, all of these statements are true:

1. The amount of ice cream consumed is correlated to the number of shark attacks

2. Cigarette smoking amongst young people correlates to poor grades at school

3. Sleeping with your shoes on correlates to suffering from headaches in the morning

4. The decline in pirate numbers correlates to the increase in global warming

5. HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) is correlated to lower levels of heart disease

6. Myopia (shortsightedness) is correlated to those who have slept with the light on as children

However, there is no causatory link between these two different states. So how can we explain them? Some are obvious; others are not.

1. Ice consumption rises in the summer, when there are more people on the beach (and in the sea)

2. Cigarette smoking is most commonly carried out either by children whose parents are less supportive of their studies, or by students who are less willing to study

3. Those who sleep with their shoes are more-often-than-not suffering from the effects of a 'heavy night' - which results in a hangover the next day

4. Global warming has increased over time, as have pirate attacks

5. Hormone Replacement Therapy is expensive, and is more affordable by wealthier households. They generally have a healthier diet, and access to better medical care

6. Parents with myopia are more inclined to leave the light on in their children's rooms, and also pass on their genes for the condition

The consequence of mistaking causation for correlation can be serious. In the case of example 5, although there is a correlation, it has been demonstrated that HRT actually increases the risk of heart attack, so prescribing the treatment for those with preexisting conditions could lead to disaster.

Further complications

Extra difficulties may arise in our discovery of why things happen when the cause and the effect is hard to distinguish from one another. This is known as the chicken and egg scenario. For example, are you rich because you own lots of shares? Or do you own lots of shares because you are rich? This is relevant in a lot of social issues. Are you a drunk because you are poor, or are you poor because you are a drunk? Is prison one of the answers to crime, or is it one of the reasons it continues? These things are often self-perpetuating, and we must dig deep to find the reason for them occurring in the first place.

Sometimes things simply happen by chance, and no rule can be found to explain them. This is especially the case in human sciences (rather than natural sciences) where people commonly act on a whim, and phenomena occur randomly. Why did you put on that blue shirt today, rather than the red one? Perhaps you have a specific reason (it matches your eyes, and you want to impress the new guy in the office, or you're wearing it to express your support for a particular football team playing this afternoon), but more likely, you 'just did'. This is where human sciences differ so greatly from natural sciences – we are so hard to predict.

Differences between human and natural sciences

The key difference between human and natural sciences is one of consciousness. Whereas natural scientists study objects and organisms that are unaware of their own existence, human scientists are concerned with organisms that are. Every decision we make, we do so consciously, with purpose. Without knowing that purpose – and how can one ever know that fully about another human being - it is very hard to explain that decision meaningfully.

In natural science, this idea of purpose and motive is simply not there, so it is much easier to come up with a set of rules to explain the behaviour of physical objects or animals. Whereas compiling a set of laws to account for the behaviour of humans is, for the most part, virtually impossible. We all act in a different way, for different reasons.

Take the simple scenario proposed by the British philosopher AJ Ayer of a man with a glass of wine. The man picks up the wine glass, and drinks from it. Why does he do so? There are many, including:

1. An expression of politeness

2. A show of honour or loyalty

3. A religious observation

4. A gesture of despair

5. An act of pleasure

6. A taste test

7. An attempt to seduce

8. An attempt to corrupt

9. An attempt to summon up courage

10. The act of someone with a serious medical condition

Our man could be in a happy mood when he drinks, he could have just been dumped by his girlfriend, he could simply be thirsty. But there are many variables here, and it is impossible to say at first sight what is involved in this very simple action. As Ayer puts it:

perhaps the action can be explained only in terms of someone's intention, or by reference to social norms and conventions, or some combination of the two.

Take, in contrast, the scenario of an antelope at a river. The antelope bends her neck, and drinks from the river. Why does she do so? The answer is:

In other words, there is no conscious decision to be made by the animal; she is simply responding to a physiological need.

Some have said that the only way we can truly turn human sciences into 'proper' sciences is by stripping away all the social meaning involved in people's actions. Only then can we arrive at a point when we can apply rules to human behaviour. But how can we do this? Take the following scenarios, that have been stripped of all social meaning. Do they really constitute an accurate description of what is going on?

1. 30 men or women on an rectangular patch of grass marked with straight lines of paint are throwing an elliptical object to each other, running as fast as they can, bashing into each other, and kicking the object through very tall wooden posts at each end of the grass. Around them thousands of other people are shouting, cheering, and banging their hands together, and experiencing different emotions raging from ecstasy to fury.

2. A large crowd of people in a room, dressed in long flowing robes and flat boards of fabric on their heads, are lining up to climb some steps onto a big wooden box. When they do so, a person dressed similarly hands them pieces of paper, and the other people bang their hands together simultaneously.

3. Groups of people are gathered in a large room where sound is coming out of large black boxes so loudly that they cannot hear each other talking properly. At intervals, one person from each group gets up and goes to a long table where he exchanges small pieces of paper for glasses full of different coloured liquids. These liquids are drunk by the different groups, gradually altering the abilities of the people to control their balance, powers of reason, emotional state, and self-consciousness.

4. People are sitting in a large room filled with seats that are arranged on a rising slope towards the back of the room. The people sit in silence for about 2 hours as moving images are projected onto a large screen. Occasionally, and without referring to each other, they express emotions of fear, shock, and happiness.

Are we looking at a true account of what is going on here? Or do we need more reference to the meaning of each scenario? Do we need to use different words, and have an understanding of the implicit meaning of these words.

Another difference between the two disciplines is that in the natural sciences, the observer is not the same as what is being observed. The human sciences, of course, involve people observing people. The significance of this is massive, and its implications will be discussed as we look further into the subject.
(1. A rugby match; 2. A degree ceremony; 3. People in a bar; 4. Cinema)

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What are the aims of the human sciences?

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The aims of virtually all the human sciences are the same: to explain human behaviour, formulate theories to predict it, and then develop remedies for the problems identified by those predictions.

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Key thinkers on intuition

Adding authority to your TOK essay and presentation

The knowledge questions in your and TOK presentation should be supported not only by your own ideas and evidence, but also by those of other people. We have therefore put together a list of key thinkers for each way of knowing and area of knowledge who will add extra authority to your TOK essay and presentation, and help you to explore the KQs connected to your title. You can see the complete list of key thinkers here.

Beautiful minds

But we're thinking of more than just the TOK assessment: these minds are the source of some of the most incredible ideas ever put forward, and have shaped the way we view the world and our place in it. So we think they are worth getting to know in their own right, because they will genuinely help you to figure out this mysterious thing called existence.

Making use of these thinkers

We have indicated which elements of the course they are particularly useful for (remember you should be trying to link the different parts of TOK, so don't just focus on one WOK or AOK in isolation), and we have provided a Wikipedia link for each person. However, you should see this as the point where you begin, rather than end, your exploration of these paradigm-defining figures. We've also identified one person for each way of knowing and area of knowledge whom we consider an ESSENTIAL THINKER, due to way they challenge assumptions or provide a particularly important idea. Each of these thinkers are accompanied by a video in which they outline their theories, and which you can quote as a source for your essay or presentation.

TNK = the nature of knowledge
SP = sense perception
HS = the human sciences
IKS = indigenous knowledge systems
NS = the natural sciences
RKS = religious knowledge systems

Dutton, Denis (1944 - 2010)

ESSENTIAL THINKER Gilbert, Dan (1957 - )

Gilbert studied social psychology at Princeton, and has taught at Harvard. He is a widely published author, who writes on the subject of happiness, and how to acquire it, focusing on the way in which our intuition often leads us into making the wrong decisions.

Also helps us to explore Emotion, reason, HS

Greene, Graham (1904 - 1991)

Apart from being one of the most interesting writers of the 20 th century on the psychological motivations of human behaviour, Greene is interesting to us for what he says on the therapeutic value of writing. For this reason, he is an excellent thinker to consider when it comes to the TOK journal. He was also a noted Catholic, though had a difficult relationship with his faith.

Also helps us to explore Emotion, Faith, arts, HS, RKS

Hesse, Hermann (1877 - 1962)

Hesse was a German-born Swiss poet, novelist, painter, and spiritual thinker. His quest for enlightenment via self-knowledge characterised his writing, and helped to inspire the countercounter thinkers of the 1960s and '70s.

Also helps us to explore Emotion, faith, imagination, arts, HS

Kahneman, Daniel (1934 - )

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de (1533 - 1592)

Richards, Sam (1960 - )

Skinner, BF (1904 - 1990)

Skinner was many things, among them, a philosopher, psychologist, author, and inventor. His experiment on pigeons, in which he observed them behaving 'superstitiously', suggest that such a tendency is not limited to human beings.

Also helps us to explore Reason, HS, IKS, NS

Weil, Simone (1909 - 1943)

Weil was a French philosopher, political and religious thinker. She was noted for her compassion towards others, and is also remarkable for her thoughts and opinions on Christianity and other religions.

Also helps us to explore Emotion, faith, imagination, ethics, RKS

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Key thinkers on intuition - theoryofknowledge.net

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The knowledge questions in your and TOK presentation should be supported not only by your own ideas and evidence, but also by those of other people. We have therefore put together a list of key thinkers for each way of knowing and area of knowledge who will add extra authority to your TOK essay and presentation, and help you to explore the KQs connected to your title.

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“Without the assumption of the existence of uniformities there can be no knowledge.” Discuss this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge.

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Philosophy of Language - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy

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Cognitive Consistency definition | Psychology Glossary | alleydog.com

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Psychology definition for Cognitive Consistency in normal everyday language, edited by psychologists, professors and leading students. Help us get better.

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Book--> Consistency in Cognitive Social Behavior: An introduction to social psychology

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Book--> Consistency in Cognitive Social Behavior: An introduction to social psychology

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Consistency in Cognitive Social Behaviour

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Social psychology remains unbalanced as long as we study human behaviour exclusively 'from the outside', leaving out of account people's own reasons for acting as they do. Originally published in 1982, the result of the author's emphasis on the cognitive dimension is a much more complete and well-rounded textbook of social psychology than had previously been available.

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What is consistent? definition and meaning

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Definition of consistent: Logically ordered and/or following the same pattern. For example, a salesperson's growth is usually consistent with his or her company's earnings.

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The basic problem of economics can be summarized in one sentence: How to best satisfy unlimited wants with unlimited resources.

We can break this problem into two parts:

1. Preferences -- What we like and what we dislike.

2. Resources -- We all have limited resources. Even Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have limited resources. They have the same 24 hours in a day that we do and neither is going to live forever.

All of economics, including both microeconomics and macroeconomics, come back to this basic problem on how to use limited resources to satisfy our preferences and unlimited wants.

Rational Maximizing Behavior

In order to simply model how humans attempt to do this, we need a basic behavioral assumption. The assumption is that people attempt to maximize outcomes (that is, to do as well as possible for themselves) as defined by their preferences, given their resource constraints.

Economists refer to people who do this as exhibiting 'rational maximizing behavior'. Note that in more complex economic models that this assumption can be weakened but at a cost of added complexity.

This 'rational maximizing behavior' assumption does ​not necessarily mean that people make ex ante perfect decisions. People may be limited by the amount of information they have (e.g. 'It seemed like a good idea at the time!').

As well, 'rational maximizing behavior' says nothing about the quality or nature of people's preferences (But I enjoy hitting myself on the head with a hammer!')

Tradeoffs -- You Get What You Give

The struggle between preferences and constraints means that economists must, at their core, deal with the problem of tradeoffs.

In order to get something, we must use up some of our resources.

Examples: You give up $20 to obtain the new best seller from Amazon.com. I give up 3 hours of time to watch the Blue Jays game on T.V. ('That's three hours of my life I will never get back!')

Anything obtained has a cost. Economists have a saying for this -- "There is no such thing as a free lunch!"

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What Are The Underlying Behavioral Assumptions of Economics?

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The basic problem of economics can be summarized in one sentence: How to best satisfy unlimited wants with unlimited resources. We can break this problem into two parts: Preferences -- What we like and what we dislike. Resources -- We all have limited resources. Even Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have limited resources.

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Logic - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy

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Psychological Assumptions Flashcards | Quizlet

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Start studying Psychological Assumptions. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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1. To what extent are assumptions fundamental for our application of knowledge?

2. Do uniformities exist at all?

3. Is knowledge based on faith?

4. Are patterns the only way we can understand the world?

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patterns to show the beauty of art.

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may 2018 essay

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Laws of Nature are to be distinguished both from Scientific Laws and from Natural Laws. Neither Natural Laws, as invoked in legal or ethical theories, nor Scientific Laws, which some researchers consider to be scientists' attempts to state or approximate the Laws of Nature, will be discussed in this article. Instead, it explores issues in contemporary metaphysics.

Within metaphysics, there are two competing theories of Laws of Nature. On one account, the Regularity Theory, Laws of Nature are statements of the uniformities or regularities in the world; they are mere descriptions of the way the world is. On the other account, the Necessitarian Theory, Laws of Nature are the "principles" which govern the natural phenomena of the world. That is, the natural world "obeys" the Laws of Nature. This seemingly innocuous difference marks one of the most profound gulfs within contemporary philosophy, and has quite unexpected, and wide-ranging, implications.

Some of these implications involve accidental truths, false existentials, the correspondence theory of truth, and the concept of free will. Perhaps the most important implication of each theory is whether the universe is a cosmic coincidence or driven by specific, eternal laws of nature. Each side takes a different stance on each of these issues, and to adopt either theory is to give up one or more strong beliefs about the nature of the world.

Table of Contents

1. Laws of Nature vs. Laws of Science

2. Shared Elements in the Competing Theories

3. The Case for Necessitarianism

1. Accidental Truths vs. Laws of Nature

2. False Existentials

3. Doom vs. Failure

4. The Case for Regularity

1. Naturalizing Philosophy

2. Revisiting Physical Impossibility

3. Regularity and Explanation

4. Problems with Necessitarianism I - Its Inverting the Truth-making Relation

5. Problems with Necessitarianism II - Its Unempiricalness

6. The Regularists' Trump Card - The Dissolution of the Problem of Free Will and Determinism

5. Statistical Laws

6. Is the Order in the Universe a Cosmic Coincidence?

7. References and Further Reading

1. Laws of Nature vs. Laws of Science

In 1959, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Michael Scriven read a paper that implicitly distinguished between Laws of Nature and Laws of Science. Laws of Science (what he at that time called "physical laws") - with few exceptions - are inaccurate, are at best approximations of the truth, and are of limited range of application. The theme has since been picked up and advanced by Nancy Cartwright.

If scientific laws are inaccurate, then - presumably - there must be some other laws (statements, propositions, principles), doubtless more complex, which are accurate, which are not approximation to the truth but are literally true.

When, for example, generations of philosophers have agonized over whether physical determinism precludes the existence of free will (for example, Honderich), they have been concerned with these latter laws, the laws of nature itself.

It is the explication of these latter laws, the Laws of Nature, that is the topic of this article. We will not here be examining the "approximate truths" of science. Thus, to cite just one example, the controversy over whether scientific laws are (merely) instruments lies outside the topic of this article.

2. The Two Principal Views

Theories as to the features of Laws of Nature fall into two, quite distinct, schools: the Humeans (or Neo-Humeans) on the one side, the Necessitarians on the other.

a. Regularity

Recent scholarship (for example, that of J. Wright and of Beauchamp and Rosenberg) makes a convincing case that the received view as to what David Hume offered as an explication of the concept of law of nature was quite mistaken, indeed the very opposite of what Hume was arguing. What, historically, until late in the Twentieth Century, was called the "Humean" account of Laws of Nature was a misnomer. Hume himself was no "Humean" as regards laws of nature. Hume, it turns out, was a Necessitarian - i.e. believed that laws of nature are in some sense "necessary" (although of course not logically necessary). His legendary skepticism was epistemological. He was concerned, indeed even baffled, how our knowledge of physical necessity could arise. What, in experience, accounted for the origin of the idea? What, in experience, provided evidence of the existence of the property? He could find nothing that played such a role.

Yet, in spite of his epistemological skepticism, he persisted in his belief that laws of nature are (physical) necessities. So as not to perpetuate the historical error as to what "Humean" properly connotes, I will abandon that term altogether and will adopt the relatively unproblematical term "Regularity" in its stead. At the very least, the Regularists' Theory of Laws of Nature denies that Laws of Nature are 'physically necessary'. There is no physical necessity, either in laws or in nature itself. There is no intermediate state between logical necessity on the one hand and sheer contingency on the other.

b. Necessitarianism

Necessitarians, in contrast, argue that there is physical (or as they sometimes call it "nomic" or "nomological") necessity. They offer two different accounts. According to some Necessitarians, physical necessity is a property of the Laws of Nature (along with truth, universality, etc.); according to other Necessitarians, physical necessity inheres in the very woof and warp (the stuff and structure) of the universe.

Thus, for example, on the first of these two Necessitarian theories, electrons will bear the electrical charge -1.6 x 10 Coulombs because there is a Law of Nature to that effect, and the universe conforms to, or is 'governed' by, this physically necessary (i.e. nomological) principle (along with a number of others, of course).

On the second of the two Necessitarian theories, the "necessity" of an electron's bearing this particular electrical charge "resides" in the electron itself. It is of the very 'nature' of an electron, by necessity, to have this particular electrical charge. On this latter account, the statement "All electrons bear a charge of -1.6 x 10 Coulombs" is a Law of Nature because it correctly (veridically) describes a physical necessity in the world.

3. Shared Elements in the Competing Theories

Regularists and Necessitarians agree as to five conditions necessary for a statement's being a Law of Nature.

1.

are factual truths, not logical ones;

"The boiling point of sulfur is 444.6° Celsius" expresses a factual truth. "Every number has a double" expresses a logical truth.

2.

are true for every time and every place in the universe;

There are no laws of nature that hold just for the planet earth (or the Andromeda Galaxy, for that matter), nor are there any that hold just for the Eighteenth Century or just for the Mesozoic Era.

3.

contain no proper names;

Laws of nature may contain general concepts, such as "mass", "color", "aptitude", "capital", "diabetes", "return on investments", etc.; but may not contain such terms as "the Fraser River", "the planet Earth", "$59.22", "June 18, 1935", "IBM", etc.

4.

are universal or statistical claims; and

"(All pure) copper conducts electricity" expresses a law of nature. But "Stars exist" (although true) does not express a law of nature: it is neither a universal nor a statistical claim.

5.

are conditional claims, not categorical ones.

Categorical claims which are equivalent to conditional claims (e.g. "There are no perpetual motion machines of the first kind" which is equivalent to "If anything is a perpetual motion machine then it is not of the first kind") are candidates for lawfulness.

Categorical claims (e.g., again, "There are stars") which are not equivalent to conditionals are not candidates for lawfulness.

Note: Laws of physics which are expressed mathematically are taken to be elliptical for conditional truths. For example, the law "m v = m o/(1 - v ²/c ²) ½ " is to be read as equivalent to "for any massy object, if its velocity is v, then its mass [m v] is equal to its rest mass [m o] divided by ..."

Are these five conditions jointly sufficient for a proposition's being a Law of Nature? Regularists say "yes"; Necessitarians, "no".

4. The Case for Necessitarianism

Necessitarians lay claim to a number of examples which, they say, can be explicated only by positing a sixth necessary condition for laws of nature, namely, by positing natural (physical /nomic /nomological) necessity.

a. Accidental Truths vs. Laws of Nature

Moas (a large flightless bird that lived in New Zealand) have been extinct for more than a century. We can assume (this example is Popper's [ The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Appendix *x]) that some one of them (we needn't know which one) was the oldest Moa ever to have lived. Suppose it died at the age of n years. Thus the statement "No moa lives beyond the age of n years" is true (where "lives" is being used as a tenseless verb). Moreover this statement satisfies all the other necessary conditions specified above.

But, Necessitarians will argue, the statement "No moa lives beyond the age of n years" is not a law of nature. It is counterintuitive to believe that such a statement could be on the same (metaphysical) footing as "No perpetual motion machine of the first kind exists", or, citing another example, "No object having mass is accelerated beyond the speed of light". The latter statements are bona fide laws of nature; the former a mere 'accidental' truth. The difference lies in the (alleged) fact that the latter two cases (about perpetual motion machines and about massy objects) are physically necessary truths; the former (about moas) is a mere accidental truth. To use Popper's terminology, genuine laws of nature "forbid" certain things to happen; accidental truths do not. Suppose the oldest moa - we'll call him Ludwig - died, of an intestinal infection, at the age of (let's say) 12 years. (I haven't any idea what the average life span of moas was. It's irrelevant for our purposes.) Now suppose that Ludwig had a younger brother, Johann, hatched from the same clutch of eggs, one hour later than Ludwig himself. Poor Johann - he was shot by a hunter 10 minutes before Ludwig died of his illness. But, surely, had Johann not been shot, he would have lived to a greater age than Ludwig. Unlike his (very slightly) older brother, Johann was in perfect health. Johann was well on his way to surviving Ludwig; it's just that a hunter dispatched him prematurely. His death was a misfortune; it was not mandated by a law of nature.

b. False Existentials

False existential statements of the sort "Some silver burns at -22° Celsius" and "There is a river of cola" are logically equivalent to statements satisfying all of the five necessary conditions specified above. If those conditions were to constitute a set of sufficient conditions for a statement's being a law of nature, then the statement "No river is constituted of cola" would be a law of nature.

The oddity goes even more deeply. Given that what it is to be physically impossible is to be logically inconsistent with a law of nature, then every false existential statement of the sort "Some S is P" or "There is an S that is a P" would turn out to be, not just false, but physically impossible.

But surely the statement "There is a river of cola", although false, is not physically impossible. There could be such a river. It would merely require a colossal accident (such as befell Boston in 1912 when a huge vat of molasses ruptured), or the foolish waste of a great deal of money.

If "there is a river of cola" is not to be regarded as physically impossible, then some one or more further conditions must be added to the set of necessary conditions for lawfulness. Physical necessity would seem to be that needed further condition.

c. Doom vs. Failure

Suppose (1) that Earth is the only planet in the universe to have supported intelligent life; and (2) that all life on Earth perished in 1900 when the earth was struck by a meteor 10,000 km in diameter. Clearly, under those conditions, the Wright Brothers would never have flown their plane at Kitty Hawk. Even though tinkerers and engineers had been trying for centuries to build a heavier-than-air motorized flying machine, everyone had failed to produce one. But their failure was merely failure; these projects were not doomed. Yet, if the universe had had the slightly different history just described, the statement "there is a heavier-than-air motorized flying machine" would turn out to be physically impossible; hence the project was doomed. But, Necessitarians will argue, not all projects that fail are doomed. Some are doomed, e.g. any attempt to accelerate a massy object beyond the speed of light, or, e.g. to build a perpetual motion machine of the first kind. Again, just as in the case of accidental truths and lawful truths, we do not want to collapse the distinction between doom and failure. Some projects are doomed; others are mere failures. The distinction warrants being preserved, and that requires positing physical necessity (and - what is the other side of the same coin - physical impossibility).

5. The Case for Regularity

With the dawning of the modern, scientific, age came the growing realization of an extensive sublime order in nature. To be sure, humankind has always known that there is some order in the natural world - e.g. the tides rise and fall, the moon has four phases, virgins have no children, water slakes thirst, and persons grow older, not younger. But until the rise of modern science, no one suspected the sweep of this order. The worldview of the West has changed radically since the Renaissance. From a world which seemed mostly chaotic, there emerged an unsuspected underlying order, an order revealed by physics, chemistry, biology, economics, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, geology, evolutionary theory, pharmacology, epidemiology, etc.

And so, alongside the older metaphysical question, "Why is there anything, rather than nothing?", there arises the newer question, "Why is the world orderly, rather than chaotic?" How can one explain the existence of this pervasive order? What accounts for it?

a. Naturalizing Philosophy

Even as recently as the Eighteenth Century, we find philosophers (e.g. Montesquieu) explicitly attributing the order in nature to the hand of God, more specifically to His having imposed physical laws on nature in much the same way as He imposed moral laws on human beings. There was one essential difference, however. Human beings - it was alleged - are "free" to break (act contrary to) God's moral laws; but neither human beings nor the other parts of creation are free to break God's physical laws.

In the Twentieth Century virtually all scientists and philosophers have abandoned theistic elements in their accounts of the Laws of Nature. But to a very great extent - so say the Regularists - the Necessitarians have merely replaced God with Physical Necessity. The Necessitarians' nontheistic view of Laws of Nature surreptitiously preserves the older prescriptivist view of Laws of Nature, namely, as dictates or edicts to the natural universe, edicts which - unlike moral laws or legislated ones - no one, and no thing, has the ability to violate.

Regularists reject this view of the world. Regularists eschew a view of Laws of Nature which would make of them inviolable edicts imposed on the universe. Such a view, Regularists claim, is simply a holdover from a theistic view. It is time, they insist, to adopt a thoroughly naturalistic philosophy of science, one which is not only purged of the hand of God, but is also purged of its unempirical latter-day surrogate, namely, nomological necessity. The difference is, perhaps, highlighted most strongly in Necessitarians saying that the Laws of Nature govern the world; while Regularists insist that Laws of Nature do no more or less than correctly describe the world.

b. Revisiting Physical Impossibility

Doubtless the strongest objection Necessitarians level against Regularists is that the latter's theory obliterates the distinction between laws of nature (for example, "No massy object is accelerated beyond the speed of light") and accidental generalizations (e.g. "No Moa lives more than n years"). Thus, on the Regularists' account, there is a virtually limitless number of Laws of Nature. (Necessitarians, in contrast, typically operate with a view that there are only a very small number, a mere handful, of Laws of Nature, that these are the 'most fundamental' laws of physics, and that all other natural laws are logical consequences of [i.e. 'reducible to'] these basic laws. I will not further pursue the issue of reductivism in this article.)

What is allegedly wrong with there being no distinction between accidental generalizations and 'genuine' Laws of Nature? Just this (say the Necessitarians): if there is a virtually limitless number of Laws of Nature, then (as we have seen above) every false existential statement turns out to be physically impossible and (again) the distinction between (mere) failure and doom is obliterated.

How can Regularists reply to this seemingly devastating attack, issuing as it does from deeply entrenched philosophical intuitions?

Regularists will defend their theory against this particular objection by arguing that the expression "physically impossible" has different meanings in the two theories: there is a common, or shared, meaning of this expression in both theories, but there is an additional feature in the Necessitarians' account that is wholly absent in the Regularists'.

The common (i.e. shared) meaning in "physically impossible" is "inconsistent with a Law of Nature". That is, anything that is inconsistent with a Law of Nature is "physically impossible". (On a prescriptivist account of Laws of Nature, one would say Laws of Nature "rule out" certain events and states-of-affairs.)

On both accounts - Necessitarianism and Regularity - what is physically impossible never, ever, occurs - not in the past, not at present, not in the future, not here, and not anywhere else.

But on the Necessitarians' account, there is something more to a physically impossible event's nonoccurrence and something more to a physically impossible state-of-affair's nonexistence. What is physically impossible is not merely nonoccurrent or nonexistent. These events and states-of-affairs simply could not occur or exist. There is, then, in the Necessitarians' account, a modal element that is entirely lacking in the Regularists' theory. When Necessitarians say of a claim - e.g. that someone has built a perpetual motion machine of the first kind - that it is physically impossible, they intend to be understood as claiming that not only is the situation described timelessly and universally false, it is so because it is nomically impossible.

In contrast, when Regularists say that some situation is physically impossible - e.g. that there is a river of cola - they are claiming no more and no less than that there is no such river, past, present, future, here, or elsewhere. There is no nomic dimension to their claim. They are not making the modal claim that there could not be such a river; they are making simply the factual (nonmodal) claim that there timelessly is no such river. (Further reading: 'The' Modal Fallacy.)

According to Regularists, the concept of physical impossibility is nothing but a special case of the concept of timeless falsity. It is only when one imports from other theories (Necessitarianism, Prescriptivism, etc.) a different, modal, meaning of the expression, that paradox seems to ensue. Understand the ambiguity of the expression, and especially its nonmodal character in the Regularity theory, and the objection that the Necessitarians level is seen to miss its mark.

(There is an allied residual problem with the foundations of Necessitarianism. Some recent authors [e.g. Armstrong and Carroll] have written books attempting to explicate the concept of nomicity. But they confess to being unable to explicate the concept, and they ultimately resort to treating it as an unanalyzable base on which to erect a theory of physical lawfulness.)

c. Regularity and Explanation

Another philosophical intuition that has prompted the belief in Necessitarianism has been the belief that to explain why one event occurred rather than another, one must argue that the occurring event "had to happen" given the laws of nature and antecedent conditions. In a nutshell, the belief is that laws of nature can be used to explain the occurrence of events, accidental generalizations - 'mere truths devoid of nomic force' - can not be so utilized.

The heyday of the dispute over this issue was the 1940s and 50s. It sputtered out, in more or less an intellectual standoff, by the late 60s. Again, philosophical intuitions and differences run very deep. Regularists will argue that we can explain events very well indeed, thank you, in terms of vaguely circumscribed generalities; we do not usually invoke true generalities, let alone true generalities that are assumed to be nomically necessary. In short, we can, and indeed do several times each day, explain events without supposing that the principles we cite are in any sense necessary. Regularists will point to the fact that human beings had, for thousands of years, been successfully explaining some events in their environment (e.g. that the casting cracked because it had been cooled down too quickly) without even having the concept of nomicity, much less being able to cite any nomologically necessary universal generalizations.

Necessitarianism, on this view, then, is seen to dovetail with a certain - highly controversial - view of the nature of explanation itself, namely, that one can explain the occurrence of an event only when one is in a position to cite a generalization which is nomologically necessary. Few philosophers are now prepared to persist with this view of explanation, but many still retain the belief that there are such things as nomologically necessary truths. Regularists regard this belief as superfluous.

d. Problems with Necessitarianism I - Its Inverting the Truth-making Relation

Religious skeptics - had they lived in a society where they might have escaped torture for asking the question - might have wondered why (/how) the world molds itself to God's will. God, on the Prescriptivist view of Laws of Nature, commanded the world to be certain ways, e.g. it was God's will (a law of nature that He laid down) that all electrons should have a charge of -1.6 x 10 Coulombs. But how is all of this supposed to play out? How, exactly, is it that electrons do have this particular charge? It is a mighty strange, and unempirical, science that ultimately rests on an unintelligible power of a/the deity.

Twentieth-century Necessitarianism has dropped God from its picture of the world. Physical necessity has assumed God's role: the universe conforms to (the dictates of? / the secret, hidden, force of? / the inexplicable mystical power of?) physical laws. God does not 'drive' the universe; physical laws do.

But how? How could such a thing be possible? The very posit lies beyond (far beyond) the ability of science to uncover. It is the transmuted remnant of a supernatural theory, one which science, emphatically, does not need.

There is another, less polemical, way of making the same point.

Although there are problems aplenty in Tarski's theory of truth (i.e. the semantic theory of truth, also called the "correspondence theory of truth"), it is the best theory we have. Its core concept is that statements (or propositions) are true if they describe the world the way it is, and they are false otherwise. Put metaphorically, we can say that truth flows to propositions from the way the world is. Propositions 'take their truth' from the world; they do not impose their truth on the world. If two days before an election, Tom says "Sylvia will win", and two days after the election, Marcus says, "Sylvia won", then whether these statements are true or false depends on whether or not Sylvia is elected. If she is, both statements are true; if she is not, then both statements are false. But the truth or falsity of those statements does not bring about her winning (or losing), or cause her to win (or lose), the election. Whether she wins or loses is up to the voters, not to certain statements.

Necessitarians - unwittingly perhaps - turn the semantic theory of truth on its head. Instead of having propositions taking their truth from the way the world is, they argue that certain propositions - namely the laws of nature - impose truth on the world.

The Tarskian truth-making relation is between events or state-of-affairs on the one hand and properties of abstract entities (propositions) on the other. As difficult as it may be to absorb such a concept, it is far more difficult to view a truth-making relationship the 'other way round'. Necessitarianism requires that one imagine that a certain privileged class of propositions impose their truth on events and states of affairs. Not only is this monumental oddity of Necessitarianism hardly ever noticed, no one - so far as I know - has ever tried to offer a theory as to its nature.

e. Problems with Necessitarianism II - Its Unempiricalness

Eighteenth-century empiricists (Hume most especially) wondered where, in experience, there was anything that prompted the concept of physical necessity. Experience, it would seem, provides at best only data about how the world is, not how it must be, i.e. experience provides data concerning regularity, not (physical) necessity. Hume's best answer, and it is clearly inadequate, lay in a habit of mind.

Twentieth-century empiricists are far more concerned with the justification of our concepts than with their origins. So the question has now evolved to "what evidence exists that warrants a belief in a physical necessity beyond the observed and posited regularities in nature?"

A number of Necessitarians (see, for example, von Wright) have tried to describe experiments whose outcomes would justify a belief in physical necessity. But these thought-experiments are impotent. At best - as Hume clearly had seen - any such experiment could show no more than a pervasive regularity in nature; none could demonstrate that such a regularity flowed from an underlying necessity.

f. The Regularists' Trump Card - The Dissolution of the Problem of Free Will and Determinism

In the Regularity theory, the knotted problem of free will vs. determinism is solved (or better, "dissolved") so thoroughly that it cannot coherently even be posed.

On the Regularists' view, there simply is no problem of free will. We make choices - some trivial, such as to buy a newspaper; others, rather more consequential, such as to buy a home, or to get married, or to go to university, etc. - but these choices are not forced upon us by the laws of nature. Indeed, it is the other way round. Laws of nature are (a subclass of the) true descriptions of the world. Whatever happens in the world, there are true descriptions of those events. It's true that you cannot "violate" a law of nature, but that's not because the laws of nature 'force' you to behave in some certain way. It is rather that whatever you do, there is a true description of what you have done. You certainly don't get to choose the laws that describe the charge on an electron or the properties of hydrogen and oxygen that explain their combining to form water. But you do get to choose a great many other laws. How do you do that? Simply by doing whatever you do in fact do.

For example, if you were to choose(!) to raise your arm, then there would be a timelessly true universal description (let's call it "D ₄₇₂₉") of what you have done. If, however, you were to choose not to raise your arm, then there would be a (different) timelessly true universal description (we can call it "D ₅₃₂₂") of what you did (and D ₄₇₂₉ would be timelessly false).

Contrary to the Necessitarians' claim - that the laws of nature are not of our choosing - Regularists argue that a very great many laws of nature are of our choosing. But it's not that you reflect on choosing the laws. You don't wake up in the morning and ask yourself "Which laws of nature will I create today?" No, it's rather that you ask yourself, "What will I do today?", and in choosing to do some things rather than others, your actions - that is, your choices - make certain propositions (including some universal statements containing no proper names) true and other propositions false.

A good example embodying the Regularists' view can be found in the proposition, attributed to Sir Thomas Gresham (1519?-1579) but already known earlier, called - not surprisingly - "Gresham's Law":

[Gresham's Law is] the theory holding that if two kinds of money in circulation have the same denominational value but different intrinsic values, the money with higher intrinsic value will be hoarded and eventually driven out of circulation by the money with lesser intrinsic value.

In effect what this "law" states is that 'bad money drives out good'. For example, in countries where the governments begin issuing vast amounts of paper money, that money becomes next-to-worthless and people hoard 'good' money, e.g. gold and silver coins, that is, "good" money ceases to circulate.

Why, when paper money becomes virtually worthless, do people hoard gold? Because gold retains its economic value - it can be used in emergencies to purchase food, clothing, flight (if need be), medicine, etc., even when "bad" paper money will likely not be able to be so used. People do not hoard gold under such circumstances because Gresham's "Law" forces them to do so. Gresham's "Law" is purely descriptive (not prescriptive) and illustrates well the point Regularists insist upon: namely, that laws of economics are not causal agents - they do not force the world to be some particular way rather than another. (Notice, too, how this non-nomological "Law" works perfectly adequately in explaining persons' behavior. Citing regularities can, and does, explain the way the world is. One does not need to posit an underlying, inaccessible, nomicity.)

The manner in which we regard Gresham's "Law" ought, Regularists suggest, to be the way we regard all laws of nature. The laws of physics and chemistry are no different than the laws of economics. All laws of nature - of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of economics, of psychology, of sociology, and so forth - are nothing more, nor anything less, than (a certain subclass of) true propositions.

Persons who believe that there is a problem reconciling the existence of free will and determinism have turned upside down the relationship between laws of nature on the one side and events and states of affairs on the other. It is not that laws of nature govern the world. We are not "forced" to choose one action rather than another. It is quite the other way round: we choose, and the laws of nature accommodate themselves to our choice. If I choose to wear a brown shirt, then it is true that I do so; and if instead I were to choose to wear a blue shirt, then it would be true that I wear a blue shirt. In neither case would my choosing be 'forced' by the truth of the proposition that describes my action. And the same semantic principle applies even if the proposition truly describing my choice is a universal proposition rather than a singular one.

To make the claim even more pointedly: it is only because Necessitarianism tacitly adopts an anti-semantic theory of truth that the supposed problem of free will vs. determinism even arises. Adopt a thoroughgoing Regularist theory and the problem evaporates.

6. Statistical Laws

Many, perhaps most, of workaday scientific laws (recall the first section above) are statistical generalizations - e.g. the scientific claims (explanatory principles) of psychology, economics, meteorology, ecology, epidemiology, etc.

But can the underlying, the "real," Laws of Nature itself be statistical?

With occasional reluctance, especially early in the Twentieth Century, physicists came to allow that at least some laws of nature really are statistical, for example, laws such as "the half-life of radium is 1,600 years" which is a shorthand way of saying "in any sample of radium, 50% of the radium atoms will radioactively decay within a period of 1,600 years".

Regularists take the prospect (indeed the existence) of statistical laws of nature in stride. On the Regularists' account, statistical laws of nature - whether in areas studied by physicists or by economists or by pharmacologists - pose no intellectual or theoretical challenges whatsoever. Just as deterministic (i.e. exceptionless) laws are descriptions of the world, not prescriptions or disguised prescriptions, so too are statistical laws.

Necessitarians, however, frequently have severe problems in accommodating the notion of statistical laws of nature. What sort of metaphysical 'mechanism' could manifest itself in statistical generalities? Could there be such a thing as stochastic nomicity? Popper grappled with this problem and proposed what he came to call "the propensity theory of probability". On his view, each radium atom, for example, would have its "own"(?) 50% propensity to decay within the next 1,600 years. Popper really did see the problem that statistical laws pose for Necessitarianism, but his solution has won few, if any, other subscribers. To Regularists, such solutions appear as evidence of the unworkability and the dispensability of Necessitarianism. They are the sure sign of a theory that is very much in trouble.

7. Is the Order in the Universe a Cosmic Coincidence?

An important subtext in the dispute between Necessitarians and Regularists concerns the very concepts we need to 'make sense' of the universe.

For Regularists, the way-the-world-is is the rock bottom of their intellectual reconstruction. They have reconciled themselves to, and embraced, the ultimately inexplicable contingency of the universe.

But for Necessitarians, the way-the-world-is cannot be the rock bottom. For after all - they will insist - there has to be some reason, some explanation, why the world is as it is and is not some other way. It can't simply be, for example, that all electrons, the trillions upon trillions of them, just happen to all bear the identical electrical charge as one another - that would be a cosmic coincidence of an unimaginable improbability. No, this is no coincidence. The identity of electrical charge comes about because there is a law of nature to the effect that electrons have this charge. Laws of nature "drive" the world. The laws of physics which, for example, describe the behavior of diffraction gratings (see Harrison) were true from time immemorial and it is because of those laws that diffraction gratings, when they came to be engineered in modern times, have the peculiar properties they do.

Regularists will retort that the supposed explanatory advantage of Necessitarianism is illusory. Physical necessity - nomicity if you will - is as idle and unempirical a notion as was Locke's posit of a material substratum. Locke's notion fell into deserved disuse simply because it did no useful work in science. It was a superfluous notion. (The case is not unlike modern arguments that minds are convenient fictions, the product of "folk" psychology.)

At some point explanations must come to an end. Regularists place that stopping point at the way-the-world-is. Necessitarians place it one, inaccessible, step beyond, at the way-the-world-must-be.

The divide between Necessitarians and Regularists remains as deep as any in philosophy. Neither side has conceived a theory which accommodates all our familiar, and deeply rooted, historically-informed beliefs about the nature of the world. To adopt either theory is to give up one or more strong beliefs about the nature of the world. And there simply do not seem to be any other theories in the offing. While these two theories are clearly logical contraries, they are - for the foreseeable future - also exhaustive of the alternatives.

8. Notes

1. Throughout this article, the term "world" is used to refer to the entire universe, past, present, and future, to whatever is near and whatever is far, and to whatever is known of that universe and what is unknown. The term is never used here to refer to just the planet Earth.Clearly, one presupposition of this article is that the world (i.e. the universe) is not much of our making. Given the sheer size of the universe, our human effect on it is infinitesimal. The world is not mind-constructed. The world is some one particular way, although it remains a struggle to figure out what that way is. [ Return ]

2. A perpetual motion machine of the first kind is a hypothetical machine in which no energy is required for performing work. [ Return ]

3. In detail - The statement "There is a river of cola" is an existential affirmative statement (a classical so-called I-proposition). Its contradictory (or better, among its contradictories) is the statement "No river is constituted of cola" (a classical so-called E-proposition). Now, given that "There is a river of cola" is, ex hypothesi, timelessly false, then the universal negative proposition, "No river is constituted of cola", is timelessly true. But since the latter satisfies all five of the necessary conditions specified (above) for being a law of nature, it would turn out to be a law of nature. [ Return ]

9. References and Further Reading

Armstrong, David M., What is a Law of Nature? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1983.

Beauchamp, Tom L., editor, Philosophical Problems of Causation, (Encino, CA: Dickenson Publishing Co., Inc.), 1974.

Beauchamp, Tom L. and Alexander Rosenberg, Hume and the Problem of Causation, (New York: Oxford University Press), 1981.

Berofsky, Bernard, Freedom from Necessity: The Metaphysical Basis of Responsibility, (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 1987.

Carroll, John W., Laws of Nature, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1994.

Cartwright, Nancy, How the Laws of Physics Lie, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1983.

Clarke, Randolph, "Recent Work on Freedom and Determinism", in Philosophical Books, vol. 36, no. 1 (Jan. 1995), pp. 9-18.

Dretske, Fred, "Laws of Nature," in Philosophy of Science, vol. 44, no. 2 (June 1977), pp. 248-268.

Gerwin, Martin, "Causality and Agency: A Refutation of Hume", in Dialogue (Canada), XXVI (1987), pp. 3-17.

Harrison, George R., "Diffraction grating," in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Physics, edited by Sybil P. Parker, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.), 1983, pp. 245-247.

Honderich, Ted, "One Determinism," (revised with added introduction) in Philosophy As It Is, edited by Ted Honderich and Myles Burneat, (New York: Penguin Books), 1979. The original paper appeared in Essays on Freedom of Action, edited by Ted Honderich (London: Kegan Paul Ltd.), 1973.

Hume, David A., A Treatise of Human Nature [1739], edited by L.A. Selby-Bigge, (London: Oxford University Press), 1888, reprinted 1960.

Kneale, William, "Natural Laws and Contrary-to-Fact Conditionals," in Analysis, vol. 10, no. 6 (June 1950), pp. 121-125. Reprinted in Beauchamp (1974) [see above], pp. 46-49.

Maxwell, Nicholas, "Can there be necessary connections between successive events?", in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 19 (1968), pp. 1-25.

Molnar, George, "Kneale's Argument Revisited," in The Philosophical Review, vol.78, no. 1 (Jan. 1969) pp. 79-89. Reprinted in Beauchamp (1974) [see above], pp. 106-113.

Montesquieu, Baron de, The Spirit of the Laws, [1st edition 1748; last edition (posth.) 1757], translated and edited by Abbe M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller, and Harold Samuel Stone, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1988.

Popper, Sir Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, (New York: Basic Books), 1959.

Popper, Sir Karl, "The Propensity interpretation of the calculus of probability, and the quantum theory", in Observation and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Physics, [1957] edited by Stephen Korner, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.) 1962, pp. 65-70.

Popper, Sir Karl, "The Propensity Interpretation of Probability," in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 10 (1959), pp. 25-42.

Popper, Sir Karl, "Suppes's Criticism of the Propensity Interpretation of Probability and Quantum Mechanics," in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, (La Salle, IL: Open Court), 1974, pp. 1125-1140.

Reichenbach, Hans, Nomological Statements and Admissible Operations, (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publ. Co.), 1954.

Scriven, Michael, "An Essential Unpredictability in Human Behavior," in Scientific Psychology: Principles and Approaches, edited by Ernest Nagel and Benjamin Wolman, (New York: Basic Books), 1965, pp. 411-25.
This important paper implicitly adopts a Regularity theory of laws of nature.

Scriven, Michael, "The Key Property of Physical Laws - Inaccuracy," in Current Issues in the Philosophy of Science - Proceedings of Section L of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, 1959, edited by H. Feigl and G. Maxwell, (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston), 1961, pp. 91-104.

Strawson, Galen, The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1989.

Swartz, Norman, The Concept of Physical Law, (New York: Cambridge University Press), 1985.

Swartz, Norman, "Reply to Ruse," in Dialogue (Canada), XXVII, (1988), pp. 529-532.

Weinert, Friedel, editor, Laws of Nature: Essays on the Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Dimensions, (Berlin: de Gruyter), 1995.
This volume contains a very extensive bibliography, pp. 52-64.

Wright, Georg Henrik von, Causality and Determinism, (New York: Columbia University Press), 1974.

Wright, John P., The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 1983.

Author Information

Norman Swartz
Email: swartz@sfu.ca
Simon Fraser University
Canada

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Laws of Nature are to be distinguished both from Scientific Laws and from Natural Laws. Neither Natural Laws, as invoked in legal or ethical theories, nor Scientific Laws, which some researchers consider to be scientists' attempts to state or approximate the Laws of Nature, will be discussed in this article.

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In his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), the philosopher David Hume argued that it is not reasonable to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow.

I wonder if Hume was always such a gloomy character. I for one wouldn't be inclined to invite a friend to my party if he would preach to everyone that they should give up the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. That'd kill the party mood.

But is Hume right? Here's why he thinks it's not reasonable to believe the sun will rise tomorrow.

Let's first start asking the question: why do we believe the sun will rise tomorrow? Well, you might say, it has risen every day until now. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow as well.

But Hume doesn't think so. He argues that induction cannot lead us to this conclusion.

What is induction?
Suppose you find a raven. It is black. You look for another raven. It is also black. You go on a trip through the country, looking out for as many ravens you can find. All ravens you see are black. At the end you've seen many ravens and all of them are black. Based on these observations, you draw the conclusion: the next raven I'll see will be black. Is this a valid inference?

An inference is valid if (and only if) the truth of all premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion. In this case, there are many premises:

p1. Raven no. 1 is black
p2. Raven no. 2 is black
p3. Raven no. 3 is black
...
pn. Raven no. n is black
------
conclusion: Raven no. n+1 will be black.

But do these premises guarantee the conclusion? No. Even if you've seen 23786 black ravens, and none of another colour, it is still possible that the next raven is an albino raven, and therefore white. So the conclusion is not valid...

...unless you add another premise. The key premise you need to add to make the inference valid is: the future resembles the past. So you get:

p1. Raven no. 1 is black
p2. Raven no. 2 is black
p3. Raven no. 3 is black
...
p n. Raven no. n is black
and
p m. The future resembles the past.
------
conclusion: Raven no. n+1 will be black.

But remember that the conclusion only follows if the premises are true. Is the premise 'the future resembles the past' true? Well, you might say, the future has so far resembled the past, because during my entire trip, the next raven was black all the time. But then you get the same problem:

p1. At t1, the future turned out to resemble the past.
p1. At t2, the future turned out to resemble the past.
...
p n At t n, the future turned out to resemble the past.
-------
conclusion: The next time, the future will also resemble the past.

This is, again, an induction, so you'll need 'the future resembles the past' as a premise, again. But that leads to a fallacy of circularity: one of the premises is the same as the conclusion. Circularity doesn't prove anything, so we can't say with certainty that it's true that the future will resemble the past. Therefore, we can't use it in our induction about the ravens, and therefore we can't conclude that the next raven will be black.
But what have these ravens to do with the sunrise?
According to Hume, the same applies to the sun. Just because it has risen every morning, doesn't mean we can conclude that it will rise again tomorrow.
Why should I care?
Science, and indeed our daily conduct, would be impossible if we didn't rely on inductive reasoning. So what do we do now? We have a problem!
Resources
This video explains the above in a slightly different way.

More info on Hume's philosophy can be found in this episode of BBC's In Our Time.

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Will the sun rise tomorrow? The problem of induction - 01/02/2016

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In his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), the philosopher David Hume argued that it is not reasonable to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. I wonder if Hume was always such a gloomy character. I for one wouldn't be inclined to invite a friend to my party if he would preach to everyone that...

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What is uniformity? Definition and meaning investor wordsdefine uniformity at dictionary. Uniformity implies consistency in lack of variation between the items being compared, over a long period and across wide range. See also comparability analysis definition of uniformity an appraisal term used to describe assessed values that have the same relationship market value, implying equalization noun, plural uniformitiesthe state or quality being uniform; Overall sameness, homogeneity, regularity style.

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Radical constructivism would cautiously describe social reality as the product of uniformities among observers (whether or not including the current observer themselves).

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Social reality is distinct from biological reality or individual cognitive reality, representing as it does a phenomenological level created through social interaction and thereby transcending individual motives and actions.[citation needed ] The product of human dialogue, social reality may be considered as consisting of the accepted social tenets of a community, involving thereby relatively stable laws and social representations.

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Marcus du Sautoy: Symmetry, reality's riddle

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The world turns on symmetry -- from the spin of subatomic particles to the dizzying beauty of an arabesque. But there's more to it than meets the eye. Here, Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy offers a glimpse of the invisible numbers that marry all symmetrical objects.

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Time consistency is a large question that deals with time and actions in time. The concept means keeping something consistent with time, and it is much broader question than commonly understood. Keeping something consistent with time means not only consistency but controlling the effects of the passage of time as well.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Inductive and Deductive Reasoning (using logic)

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Inductive and Deductive Reasoning (using logic)

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Using Reasoning

Andrew and Kevin are studying for their upcoming speech final. They have to define inductive and deductive reasoning and provide examples of each. Kevin says he has a great example for deductive reasoning: 'Every time it hails, I get a dent in my car. Every time it hails, my dad gets a dent in his car. Every time it hails, my brother gets a dent in his car. Every time it hails, everyone will get a dent in their cars.'

Andrew says that Kevin does not have an example of deductive reasoning, but it is better as an example for inductive reasoning. Who is right?

In this lesson, you will learn about the concept of reasoning and how it is used in conjunction with logic for inductive and deductive arguments.

Reasoning and Logic

First, let's discuss the concept of reasoning. Reasoning is the action of constructing thoughts into a valid argument. This is something you probably do every day. When you make a decision, you are using reasoning, taking different thoughts and making those thoughts into reasons why you should go with one option over the other options available. When you construct an argument, that argument will be either valid or invalid. A valid argument is reasoning that is comprehensive on the foundation of logic or fact.

Now let's discuss propositional logic. Inductive and deductive reasoning are both forms of propositional logic. Propositional logic is the branch of logic that studies ways of joining and/or modifying entire propositions, statements or sentences to form more complicated propositions, statements or sentences. For our purposes, this means that propositional logic uses a series of facts and reasoning to develop a conclusion. Inductive and deductive reasoning use propositional logic to develop valid arguments based on fact and reasoning. Both types of reasoning have a premise and a conclusion. How each type of reasoning gets to the conclusion is different.

Let's discuss inductive reasoning first.

Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning is reasoning where the premises support the conclusion. The conclusion is the hypothesis, or probable. This means that the conclusion is the part of reasoning that inductive reasoning is trying to prove. Inductive reasoning is also referred to as 'cause and effect reasoning' or 'bottom-up reasoning' because it seeks to prove a conclusion first. This is usually derived from specific instances to develop a general conclusion.

Kevin and Andrew are now arguing about math. Kevin says that all big brothers are good at math. Andrew is an only child, but he's pretty sure that this argument cannot be valid.

Kevin makes a conclusion based on the following premises: 'My older brother is good at math. My friend's older brother is good at math. My neighbor's big brother is a math tutor. Therefore, all older brothers are good at math.'

You've probably heard people use this type of reasoning in life. We know this can't be true. You probably know that being an older brother doesn't inherently make you good at math. What Kevin has done is made a generalized conclusion: all older brothers are good at math based on three premises of specific instances: Mine, my friend's and my neighbor's older brother are all good at math. These specific instances are not representative of the entire population of older brothers. Because inductive reasoning is based on specific instances, it can often produce weak and invalid arguments.

You can remember inductive reasoning like this: inductive reasoning is bottom-up reasoning; it starts with a probable conclusion and induces premises.

Now let's talk about deductive reasoning.

Deductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning is reasoning where true premises develop a true and valid conclusion. In the case of deductive reasoning, the conclusion must be true if the premises are also true. Deductive reasoning uses general principles to create a specific conclusion. Deductive reasoning is also known as 'top-down reasoning' because it goes from general and works its way down more specific.

For example, 'All cars have engines. I have a car. Therefore, my car has an engine.'

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the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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The Differences Between Inductive and Deductive Reasoning - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Andrew and Kevin are studying for their upcoming speech final. They have to define inductive and deductive reasoning and provide examples of each. Kevin says he has a great example for deductive reasoning: 'Every time it hails, I get a dent in my car. Every time it hails, my dad gets a dent in his car.

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More notes for 13 January

Two questions

In 1.3.6.4, we are told that there are two possible explanations of how we make particular causal inferences: either "we are determined by reason to make the transition, or by a certain association and relation of perceptions." ("the transition" is from an impression to a forceful idea [a belief] in the impression's cause or one of its effects.)

Then we are told that "if reason determined us, it would proceed upon that principle, that instances, of which we have had no experience, must resemble those of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same. " I have been calling this the Uniformity Principle.

In order to discover whether this is so, we are told to "consider all the arguments upon which such a proposition may be supposed to be founded." The two kinds of arguments are demonstrations and probabilistic arguments and, of course, both fail to found the Uniformity Principle.

Here is a question raised by Will and Aidan today: why wouldn't it be enough that we believe the Uniformity Principle? After all, the Uniformity Principle holds that the things we have not experienced must resemble those we have experienced and that nature continues always uniformly the same. Suppose I had experience of As constantly followed by Bs, an impression of an A, and that I believed that things must continue as they had in the past. Wouldn't I be able to conclude that B would follow by comparing my ideas?

I had said that we do not, in fact, use the Uniformity Principle in drawing causal inferences. But Will asked why that is so obvious. Couldn't it be the case that we tacitly believe the Uniformity Principle without consciously thinking of it?

So here's what we have.

Question A

Why must we have a founding argument for the Uniformity Principle; wouldn't belief in the Uniformity Principle be enough to explain why we make causal inferences using reason?

Question B

Why must belief in the Uniformity Principle be explicit, conscious belief; why can't it be tacit, unconscious belief?

I will start with Question B; really, you should just pop open your book to pp. 72-3 (1.3.8.13-14); that's what the big quotations are from.

Question B

The second paragraph (1.3.8.14) claims that we tacitly believe the Uniformity Principle and that we have "many millions" of experiments to confirm it. That seems to mean that the answer to Question B is: we can tacitly believe the Uniformity Principle and, in fact, we do tacitly believe the Uniformity Principle.

The first paragraph (1.3.8.13) claims that we often make causal inferences without explicitly thinking of the Uniformity Principle. And it claims that this shows that we do not use reason to make our causal inferences. That seems to mean that we cannot extend the affirmative answer to question B to save the reason explanation of causal inferences: the reason explanation of causal inferences works only if our knowledge and use of the Uniformity Principle is explicit.

It will here be worth our observation, that the past experience, on which all our judgments concerning cause and effect depend, may operate on our mind in such an insensible manner as never to be taken notice of, and may even in some measure be unknown to us. A person, who stops short in his journey upon meeting a river in his way, foresees the consequences of his proceeding forward; and his knowledge of these consequences is conveyed to him by past experience, which informs him of such certain conjunctions of causes and effects. But can we think, that on this occasion he reflects on any past experience, and calls to remembrance instances that he has seen or heard of, in order to discover the effects of water on animal bodies? No, surely; this is not the method, in which he proceeds in his reasoning. The idea of sinking is so closely connected with that of water, and the idea of suffocating with that of sinking, that the mind makes the transition without the assistance of the memory. The custom operates before we have time for reflection. The objects seem so inseparable, that we interpose not a moment's delay in passing from the one to the other. But as this transition proceeds from experience, and not from any primary connexion betwixt the ideas, we must necessarily acknowledge, that experience may produce a belief and a judgment of causes and effects by a secret operation, and without being once thought of. This removes all pretext, if there yet remains any, for asserting that the mind is convinced by reasoning of that principle, that instances of which we have no experience, must necessarily resemble those of which we have. For we here find, that the understanding or imagination can draw inferences from past experience, without reflecting on it; much more without forming any principle concerning it, or reasoning upon that principle.

In general we may observe, that in all the most established and uniform conjunctions of causes and effects, such as those of gravity, impulse, solidity, etc., the mind never carries its view expressly to consider any past experience: though in other associations of objects, which are more rare and unusual, it may assist the custom and transition of ideas by this reflection. Nay, we find in some cases, that the reflection produces the belief without the custom; or, more properly speaking, that the reflection produces the custom in an oblique and artificial manner. I explain myself. It is certain, that not only in philosophy, but even in common life, we may attain the knowledge of a particular cause merely by one experiment, provided it be made with judgment, and after a careful removal of all foreign and superfluous circumstances. Now, as after one experiment of this kind, the mind, upon the appearance either of the cause or the effect, can draw an inference concerning the existence of its correlative, and as a habit can never be acquired merely by one instance, it may be thought that belief cannot in this case be esteemed the effect of custom. But this difficulty will vanish, if we consider, that, though we are here supposed to have had only one experiment of a particular effect, yet we have many millions to convince us of this principle, that like objects, placed in like circumstances, will always produce like effects; and as this principle has established itself by a sufficient custom, it bestows an evidence and firmness on any opinion to which it can be applied. The connexion of the ideas is not habitual after one experiment; but this connexion is comprehended under another principle that is habitual; which brings us back to our hypothesis. In all cases we transfer our experience to instances of which we have no experience, either expressly or tacitly, either directly or indirectly.

Question A

But why must we found the Uniformity Principle, that is, why do we have to give arguments in support of it? Why isn't it enough that we believe in the Uniformity Principle, as the second paragraph says we do, no matter why we believe in it? After all, we don't ask why we believe our impressions, we don't demand arguments showing that having an impression of an A gives us certainty that there was an A before we consider drawing causal inferences from that impression.

And, if it's enough to believe in the Uniformity Principle, why must the belief be explicit?

What I think

I can think of four things to say.

First, I am unsure just what role Hume thinks the Uniformity Principle plays in our drawing causal inferences. The first paragraph suggests we don't use it at all in many cases, the second paragraph suggests we use it quite a lot, albeit tacitly.

Strictly speaking, those are compatible claims. But they fit together oddly.

Second, either way, there appears to be an asymmetry between the association explanation and the reason explanation. Hume held that the reason explanation has to involve the conscious invocation of the Uniformity Principle when we make causal inferences. But he does not seem to have held that the same is true of the association explanation: see the second paragraph (1.3.8.14).

Is this sort of asymmetry explicitly acknowledged anywhere? I don't know.

Third, it's possible that he thought that our causal inferences could be the products of reason only if two things are true: (a) we use the Uniformity Principle in making them and (b) we are certain of the truth of the Uniformity Principle itself.

I am unsure about this. Looking carefully at 1.3.6, I don't see an assertion of (b). Instead, both demonstrative and probabilistic arguments are treated as possible foundations for the Uniformity Principle. On the other hand, he seems to say that there is a pretty good probabilistic argument for the Uniformity Principle in 1.3.14: millions of experiments confirm it. If that isn't enough, perhaps it's because he required certainty, as in (b). If so, he did not explain why he found (b) to be an obvious requirement. Perhaps it has something to do with obtaining a certain result: granted the Uniformity Principle is about how things must be, but if we are not certain that it is true, we cannot be certain about how things must be and so we cannot make certain inferences based on what the Uniformity Principle says must happen. That's just a guess on my part, though.

Fourth, all of this may well be more evidence that Hume did not really think carefully about the reason account as a possible explanation of how we make causal inferences. In 1.3.6, he may have been more interested in discussing the question of our justification for drawing causal inferences than in the explanation of how we do so. Again, if he were interested in explanations, it's hard to see why belief in the Uniformity Principle, tacit or explicit, would not do the trick.

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More notes for 13 January In 1.3.6.4, we are told that there are two possible explanations of how we make particular causal inferences: either "we are determined by reason to make the transition, or by a certain association and relation of perceptions."

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They ALWAYS touch each other at a certain point

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There are no parallel lines (they do not exist)

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They will NEVER touch each other !