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Pragmatic Laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Sandra D. Mitchell
Sandra D. Mitchell*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
*
†Department of Philosophy, University of California—San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0119.
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Abstract

Beatty, Brandon, and Sober agree that biological generalizations, when contingent, do not qualify as laws. Their conclusion follows from a normative definition of law inherited from the Logical Empiricists. I suggest two additional approaches: paradigmatic and pragmatic. Only the pragmatic represents varying kinds and degrees of contingency and exposes the multiple relationships found among scientific generalizations. It emphasizes the function of laws in grounding expectation and promotes the evaluation of generalizations along continua of ontological and representational parameters. Stability of conditions and strength of determination in nature govern projectibility. Accuracy, ontological level, simplicity, and manageability provide additional measures of usefulness.

Type
Symposium: Are There Laws of Biology?
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue S4: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Dec., 1997 , 1997 , pp. S468 - S479
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

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Footnotes

‡

I wish to thank Joel M. Smith for extremely valuable critical and constructive comments.

References

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