FUNCTIONAL LAWS

The problem of functional laws

The discussion up to this point has had, inevitably, a somewhat unrealistic air. This is because the form of the laws that we have been discussing remains within what one might call the ravens are black paradigm. This is no better than a respectable generalization at the edge where ordinary experience begins to merge into science, having the form being a raven ensures (more or less) being black. The terms do not pick out universals, although no doubt there are universals whose connections ensure the truth or near truth of the generalization. But it is the suggestion that a typical law connects just two universals that chiefly misleads. The laws that have the best present claim to be fundamental are laws that link together certain classes of universals, in particular certain determinate quantities falling under a common determinable, in some mathematical relation. They are functional laws. If we can give some plausible account of functional laws, then and only then do we have a theory of lawhood that can be taken really seriously.

There are two particularly notable characteristics of functional laws. (1) They are determinable laws, and under each such law falls a large, perhaps infinite, class of determinate laws. (2) A great many of the determinates are likely to be uninstantiated. The latter point poses a special difficulty for our metaphysical system. Take these characteristics in turn.