Abstract

Three different views have been put forward on the contemporary debate of laws of nature. The first of these is the regularity theory, which argues that the laws of nature do not imply any necessity and they are merely regularities that we observe. The second one, nomic necessity theory, by criticizing regularity theory defends that there is a nomic necessity in the laws of nature, and they have an ontological basis beyond regularity, and even so, the laws of nature are contingent. Third and the last view is dispositional essentialism. It defends that the necessity we observe in the laws of nature is based on essential dispositional properties of objects. In this study, we will describe these theories and discuss their arguments and weaknesses. Accordingly, we will state that; regularity theory has difficulties in distinguishing accidents from laws, and nomic necessity theory has problems in establishing the necessity of laws of nature and revealing the nature of particular-universal relation. Eventually, we will state that dispositional essentialism is still the strongest position among the three views and the minkish-finkish and antidote statuses -which are presented as counterexamples of dispositional essentialism- arise from categorical thinking and this leads to misinterpretation of dispositional essentialism. We will demonstrate that these counter-examples, ipso facto, affirm the basic notion of dispositions as defended by dispositional essentialism.