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Full Idea
The problem is how, without general laws, can the dispositionalist explain why generalities in behaviour are true of kinds.
Gist of Idea
Without laws, how can a dispositionalist explain general behaviour within kinds?
Source
Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.3)
Book Ref
Mumford,Stephen: 'Dispositions' [OUP 1998], p.221
A Reaction
And the answer is to make kinds depend on individuals, and not vice versa, and then point to the necessary patterns that arise from conjunctions of individual dispositions, given their identity in many individuals.
| 4794 | We don't use laws to make predictions, we call things laws if we make predictions with them [Goodman] |
| 17670 | Newton's First Law refers to bodies not acted upon by a force, but there may be no such body [Armstrong] |
| 12675 | Laws of nature are just descriptions of how things are disposed to behave [Ellis] |
| 15799 | Lawlike sentences are general attributions of disposition to all members of some class [Fetzer] |
| 4800 | Natural laws result from eliminative induction, where enumerative induction gives generalisations [Cohen,LJ, by Psillos] |
| 14339 | Without laws, how can a dispositionalist explain general behaviour within kinds? [Mumford] |
| 4793 | "All gold cubes are smaller than one cubic mile" is a true universal generalisation, but not a law [Psillos] |
| 14382 | Pragmatic laws allow prediction and explanation, to the extent that reality is stable [Leuridan] |