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Full Idea
My own view is simple: the laws of nature ought to be accepted as ontologically primitive. …They are preferable in point of familiarity to such necessitation relations between universals.
Gist of Idea
Rather than take necessitation between universals as primitive, just make laws primitive
Source
comment on David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983]) by Tim Maudlin - The Metaphysics within Physics 1.4
Book Ref
Maudlin,Tim: 'The Metaphysics within Physics' [OUP 2007], p.15
A Reaction
I think you make natures of things primitive, and reduce laws to regularities and universals to resemblances. Job done. Natures are even more 'familiar' as primitives than laws are.
Related Ideas
Idea 9411 There are no laws of nature in Aristotle; they became standard with Descartes and Newton [Mumford]
Idea 16247 Laws are primitive, so two indiscernible worlds could have the same laws [Maudlin]
8379 | In causal laws, 'events' must recur, so they have to be universals, not particulars [Russell] |
16246 | Rather than take necessitation between universals as primitive, just make laws primitive [Maudlin on Armstrong] |
9480 | Armstrong has an unclear notion of contingent necessitation, which can't necessitate anything [Bird on Armstrong] |
17681 | The laws of nature link properties with properties [Armstrong] |
15876 | Maybe laws of nature are just relations between properties? [Harré] |
15093 | We might say laws are necessary by combining causal properties with Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley laws [Shoemaker] |
15237 | Originally Humeans based lawlike statements on pure qualities, without particulars [Harré/Madden] |
14639 | Individuals enter into laws only through their general qualities and relations [McMichael] |
9432 | Laws of nature are necessary relations between universal properties, rather than about particulars [Mumford] |
9433 | If laws can be uninstantiated, this favours the view of them as connecting universals [Mumford] |
9473 | Laws cannot offer unified explanations if they don't involve universals [Bird] |
9484 | If the universals for laws must be instantiated, a vanishing particular could destroy a law [Bird] |
19039 | The view that laws are grounded in substance plus external necessity doesn't suit dispositionalism [Vetter] |