Normative and Natural Laws

Journal of Plasma Physics

Volumn 75, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 265-282

  Mumford, Stephen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61449319397     PISSN: 00318191     EISSN: 1469817X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0031819100000280     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. D. M. Armstrong, What is a Law of Nature? (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 3.
2. A. J. Ayer, ‘What is a Law of Nature?’ in The Concept of a Person (MacMillan, 1963), p. 210.
3. E. J. Lowe, ‘Sortal Terms and Natural Laws’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 17 (1980) 253-60; ‘Laws, Dispositions and Sortal Logic’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 19 (1982), 41-50; ‘What is the “Problem of Induction”?’, Philosophy, 62 (1987), 325-40; ‘Miracles and Laws of Nature’, Religious Studies, 23 (1987), 263-78 and Kinds of Being (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), chapters 8, 9 and 10.
4. Lowe's approach answers a class of problems better, I think, than the main other option: the ceteris paribus approach (see, for example, S. Schiffer, ‘Ceteris Paribus Laws’, Mind, 100 (1991), 1-17 and P. Lipton, ‘All Else Being Equal', Philosophy, 74 (1999), 155-68). I will be pointing out below some of the advantages of Lowe's approach over ceteris paribus approaches.
5. M. Lange's ‘normative’ account of laws (‘Natural Laws and the Problem of Provisos’, Erkenntnis, 38 (1993) 233-48) is not the same as Lowe's. Lange's account is normative in that law statements are said to justify certain claims about what ought to be expected, bringing to mind F. P. Ramsey's ‘forecasting’ theory of laws (‘General Propositions and Causality’ in his Philosophical Papers, D. H. Mellor (ed.), (Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 163). Lange's view will not be considered further here.
6. A word may be helpful on the relationship between the normative theory and prescriptivism in general. If what I say later is correct, the normative account is not deliberately prescriptivist; i.e. it doesn't openly claim that laws are prescriptions of a law maker. The normative account is basically the view that natural law statements have the same normative sense as legal and moral laws. But if my argument is right, no appropriate sense of normativity for natural laws can be found that is not prescriptivist. I can, however, leave the possibility open that there is a non-normative prescriptivism, e.g. if God prescribes exceptionless regularities for which a more traditional, non-normative, account of laws suffices.
7. Neither myself nor E. J. Lowe know of any discussion of the normative account in print.
8. See R. Swinburne, The Concept of Miracle (London: MacMillan, 1970), chapters 3 and 5.
9. In Lowe's final definition of miracles, however, God plays no essential role. See ‘Miracles and Laws of Nature’. p. 276, discussed in §5, below.
10. D. H. Mellor, Matters of Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 162.
11. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, (London: Hutchinson, 1980), p. 62f.
12. Note that our account of laws need not entail that no law supports a universally quantified conditional. Though a normative law permits exceptions it doesn't demand them. A law that all tax forms be returned by a certain date is consistent with them all being on time. In the natural case, however, what Lowe says on ‘perfect sortals’ will be of relevance (see §5, below).
13. ‘Laws, Dispositions and Sortal Logic’, p. 41.
14. ‘Miracles and Laws of Nature’, p. 274.
15. The normative view is superior to the ceteris paribus approach in this respect, at least as Lipton articulates the latter (‘All Else Being Equal’). His analysis of ‘all A's are B's ceteris paribus’ is that all A's are dispositionally B's though they may not all manifest that disposition (cf. ‘the disposition is there regardless’ p. 166). An albino raven is not, however, even dispositionally black in that it has a gene structure which disposes white plumage. The albino raven thus falsifies even a ceteris paribus law under Lipton's interpretation but not Lowe's normative law which seems, in this case, the right interpretation.
16. There are variations from this ‘ideal’. Britain has ‘Common law’ which is unwritten but has legal force. Civil law is not enforced with sanctions but, rather, involves some attempt at remedying a wrong to another party.
17. It should be noted that in correspondence E. J. Lowe has suggested to me another way in which normativity for laws can originate. I would prefer to leave it to him, or others, to undertake the considerable task of developing this into a credible position as I suspect it will not be thought persuasive as it stands.
18. ‘Miracles and Laws of Nature’, p. 273.
19. Kinds of Being, p. 174.
20. There have been other attempts to base natural laws on dispositional properties in: S. Shoemaker, ‘Causality and Properties’, in his Identity, Cause and Mind, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 206-33; C. Swoyer, ‘The Nature of Natural Laws’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 60 (1982) 203-23; D. H. Mellor, ‘Necessities and Universals in Natural Laws’, (1980) in his Matters of Metaphysics, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 136-53; B. Ellis and C. Lierse, ‘Dispositional Essentialism’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1994) 27-45. The position advanced here is not obviously identical with any of the above nor are the arguments in its favour taken from them.
21. S. Mumford, ‘Laws of Nature Outlawed’, Dialectica 52 (1998), 83-101.
22. S. Mumford, Dispositions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
23. ‘Miracles and Laws of Nature’, p. 276.
24. In agreement with C. Hughes, ‘Miracles, Laws of Nature and Causation’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LXVI (1992), 179-205.
25. Kinds of Being, p. 174.
26. Kinds of Being, p. 174.
27. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Nottingham, Leeds and the British Society for the Philosophy of Science. My thanks to all those who commented, especially Robert Black, Michael Clark, Paul Noordhof, Janet Raistrick, Peter Simons and also to Jonathan Lowe, Peter Lipton and Alexander Bird for correspondence on this material.