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Full Idea
Cohen contends that statements that express laws of nature are the products of eliminative induction, where accidentally true generalisations are the products of enumerative induction.
Gist of Idea
Natural laws result from eliminative induction, where enumerative induction gives generalisations
Source
report of L. Jonathan Cohen (The Problem of Natural Laws [1980], p.222) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §7.1
Book Ref
Psillos,Stathis: 'Causation and Explanation' [Acumen 2002], p.179
A Reaction
The idea is that enumerative induction only offers the support of positive instances, where eliminative induction involves attempts to falsify a range of hypotheses. This still bases laws on observed regularities, rather than essences or mechanisms.
Related Ideas
Idea 6352 Enumerative induction gives a universal judgement, while statistical induction gives a proportion [Pollock/Cruz]
Idea 18610 'Ampliative' induction infers that all members of a category have a feature found in some of them [Machery]
| 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] |