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Full Idea
Armstrong has difficulty explaining how laws entail regularities. There is no real modality in the basic components of the world, but he wants to support counterfactuals. His official position is a kind of fictionalism.
Gist of Idea
Without modality, Armstrong falls back on fictionalism to support counterfactual laws
Source
comment on David M. Armstrong (A World of States of Affairs [1997], 49-51) by Alexander Bird - Nature's Metaphysics 4.4.4
Book Ref
Bird,Alexander: 'Nature's Metaphysics' [OUP 2007], p.96
A Reaction
Armstrong seems to be up against the basic problems that laws won't explain anything if they are merely regularities (assuming they are not decrees of a supernatural force).
| 15550 | Properties are contingently existing beings with multiple locations in space and time [Armstrong, by Lewis] |
| 4798 | In recent writings, Armstrong makes a direct identification of necessitation with causation [Armstrong, by Psillos] |
| 9497 | Without modality, Armstrong falls back on fictionalism to support counterfactual laws [Bird on Armstrong] |
| 4743 | The truth-maker for a truth must necessitate that truth [Armstrong] |
| 4742 | Correspondence may be one-many or many one, as when either p or q make 'p or q' true [Armstrong] |