Experiments are generally thought of as actions or operations undertaken to test a scientific hypothesis in settings detached from the rest of society. In this paper a different notion of experiment will be discussed. It is an understanding that has been developed in the classical tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology since the 1890s, but has so far remained unexplored. This sociological understanding of experiment does not model itself strictly on the natural sciences. Rather, it implies a process of (...) societal self-experimentation without a fixed setting of a sociological experimenter. The paper discusses this notion of experiment in relation to the recursive dependency of the application and the production of sociological knowledge. It is contended that this concept of a self-experimental society offers theoretical insights that could well prove fruitful for a sociological concept of experiment beyond the realm of the laboratory. (shrink)

Social scientists have traditionally attempted to avoid extending strategies for acquiring experimental knowledge to the sphere of the social. Bruno Latour, however, has introduced a notion of the collective experiment, an experiment conducted by and with us all. In this short paper I seek to explore, by way of elucidating the talk of collective experiments, that Latour's notion has long since existed in the theory and practice of ecological design and restoration. Practitioners in ecological restoration projects find themselves in a (...) situation of double contingency, since neither do they know how nature will respond to their intervention nor is their interpretation of these responses already certain. Experimental practice in society then becomes the proceduralization of this contingency. (shrink)

Bruno Latour once argued that science laboratories actively modify the wider society by displacing crucial actors outside the laboratory into the “field.” This article turns this idea on its head by using the case of geothermal energy utilization to demonstrate that in many cases it is the experimental setup outside the laboratory that is there first, with the activities normally associated with a laboratory setting only being decided upon and implemented post hoc. As soon as the actors involved perceive unknowns (...) and uncertainties, these are relocated to various kinds of closed laboratories to be dealt with in a more controlled environment. This is done, for instance, by inviting stakeholders to laboratory-like settings or by analyzing the geochemical composition of fluids in laboratories. Thus, the risk-laden production of new knowledge by means of real-world experimentation amounts to a practice of relocating the context of discovery in society to laboratories of justification sometimes defined as such post hoc. Experimental processes in society can then be conceptualized as “real” experiments and laboratory activities as merely temporarily subordinated components of the larger experiment. (shrink)

Human instructors often refer to objects and actions involved in a task description using both linguistic and non-linguistic means of communication. Hence, for robots to engage in natural human-robot interactions, we need to better understand the various relevant aspects of human multi-modal task descriptions. We analyse reference resolution to objects in a data collection comprising two object manipulation tasks and find that 78.76% of all referring expressions to the objects relevant in Task 1 are verbally underspecified and 88.64% of all (...) referring expressions are verbally underspecified in Task 2. The data strongly suggests that a language processing module for robots must be genuinely multi-modal, allowing for seamless integration of information transmitted in the verbal and the visual channel, whereby tracking the speaker’s eye gaze and gestures as well as object recognition are necessary preconditions. (shrink)

Dem Autor geht es in erster Linie darum, einen in Deutschland weitgehend vergessenen Philosophen in den Mittelpunkt des Wissenschaftsdiskurses zu stellen. Der Thuringer Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, Schuler von Fichte und Schelling in Jena, entwickelte eine eigenstandige Philosophie, die sich einerseits der epochalen abendlandischen Geistestradition verpflichtet weiss, zugleich aber auch von der Kantischen Philosophie und ihrem kritischen Geist beeinflusst wurde. Krause ist einerseits Systemphilosoph, der immer wieder die Thematik des Absoluten oder Gottes in den Vordergrund stellt - in dieser Hinsicht (...) ist er spekulativer Idealist. Andererseits muss alle Philosophie beim Ich beginnen, sofern zeigt er sich als Denker des Transzendentalen. Krauses Philosophie ist zweistrahlig aufgebaut: Zum einen will er die endliche Welt aus Gott ableiten, andererseits soll das Ich zur Erkenntnis Gottes aufsteigen. Ausgehend von der Metaphysik wird dieser Aufstieg des Ich zum Absoluten in den verschiedenen Regionalphilosophien, in der Religion, Ethik und Asthetik thematisiert.". (shrink)

On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as “one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers.” Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. In this masterly biography, Neil Gross explores the path of Rorty’s thought over the decades in order to trace the intellectual and professional journey that led him to that (...) prominence. The child of a pair of leftist writers who worried that their precocious son “wasn’t rebellious enough,” Rorty enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen. There he came under the tutelage of polymath Richard McKeon, whose catholic approach to philosophical systems would profoundly influence Rorty’s own thought. Doctoral work at Yale led to Rorty’s landing a job at Princeton, where his colleagues were primarily analytic philosophers. With a series of publications in the 1960s, Rorty quickly established himself as a strong thinker in that tradition—but by the late 1970s Rorty had eschewed the idea of objective truth altogether, urging philosophers to take a “relaxed attitude” toward the question of logical rigor. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, he argued that philosophers should instead open themselves up to multiple methods of thought and sources of knowledge—an approach that would culminate in the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature , one of the most seminal and controversial philosophical works of our time. In clear and compelling fashion, Gross sets that surprising shift in Rorty’s thought in the context of his life and social experiences, revealing the many disparate influences that contribute to the making of knowledge. As much a book about the growth of ideas as it is a biography of a philosopher, Richard Rorty will provide readers with a fresh understanding of both the man and the course of twentieth-century thought. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno is a widely-studied figure, but most often with regard to his work on cultural theory, philosophy and aesthetics. The Sociology of Theodor Adorno provides the first thorough English-language account of Adorno's sociological thinking. Matthias Benzer reads Adorno's sociology through six major themes: the problem of conceptualising capitalist society; empirical research; theoretical analysis; social critique; the sociological text; and the question of the non-social. Benzer explains the methodological and theoretical ideas informing Adorno's reflections on sociology and illustrates Adorno's (...) approach to examining social life, including astrology, sexual taboos and racial prejudice. Benzer clarifies Adorno's sociology in relation to his work in other disciplines and the inspiration his sociology took from social thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Kracauer and Benjamin. The book raises critical questions about the viability of Adorno's sociological mode of procedure and its potential contributions and challenges to current debates in social science. (shrink)

Zenon Pylyshyn argues that cognitively driven attentional effects do not amount to cognitive penetration of early vision because such effects occur either before or after early vision. Critics object that in fact such effects occur at all levels of perceptual processing. We argue that Pylyshyn’s claim is correct—but not for the reason he emphasizes. Even if his critics are correct that attentional effects are not external to early vision, these effects do not satisfy Pylyshyn’s requirements that the effects be direct (...) and exhibit semantic coherence. In addition, we distinguish our defense from those found in recent work by Raftopoulos and by Firestone and Scholl, argue that attention should not be assimilated to expectation, and discuss alternative characterizations of cognitive penetrability, advocating a kind of pluralism. (shrink)

I develop a theory of counterfactuals about relative computability, i.e. counterfactuals such as 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then the halting problem would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is true, and 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then arithmetical truth would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is false. These counterfactuals are counterpossibles, i.e. they have metaphysically impossible antecedents. They thus pose a challenge to the orthodoxy about counterfactuals, which would treat them as uniformly true. What’s more, I (...) argue that these counterpossibles don’t just appear in the periphery of relative computability theory but instead they play an ineliminable role in the development of the theory. Finally, I present and discuss a model theory for these counterfactuals that is a straightforward extension of the familiar comparative similarity models. (shrink)

"Rechtsphilosophie zwischen Ost und West" ist das erste Buch, das systematisch das frA1/4he Werk des bedeutenden chinesischen Rechtsgelehrten, Richters, Diplomaten und Schriftstellers John C.H. Wu (1899-1986) behandelt. Die Arbeit setzt sich in chronologischer Reihenfolge kritisch mit den VerAffentlichungen Wus im Zeitraum von 1921 bis 1936 auseinander. Wu, spAter Verfechter einer dynamischen Naturrechtslehre, versucht, die mehr pragmatisch-funktionale Rechtsauffassung der fA1/4hrenden amerikanischen Rechtsgelehrten mit dem von Kant geprAgten Denken R. Stammlers zu einer inneren Begegnung zu bringen. Gleichzeitig ist die Thematik chinesischen Rechtsdenkens (...) und Philosophierens immer gegenwArtig. Die Arbeit legt ein besonderes Augenmerk auf den EinfluA von Wus kulturellem Hintergrund auf die Auseinandersetzung mit westlichem Denken und umgekehrt auf den EinfluA seiner westlichen Ausbildung auf seine Analyse der chinesischen Gedankenwelt. Das Buch will verstArkt auf diesen wichtigen Denker aufmerksam machen und den Grundstein fA1/4r eine wissenschafliche Auseinandersetzung mit ihm legen. Der Leser bekommt nicht nur einen interessanten Einblick in die zeitgeschichtlichen, rechtsphilosophischen Auseinandersetzungen, er bekommt auf einem wenig begangenen Weg Zugang zur chinesischen Kultur. (shrink)

Making good decisions in extremely complex and difficult processes and situations has always been both a key task as well as a challenge in the clinic and has led to a large amount of clinical, legal and ethical routines, protocols and reflections in order to guarantee fair, participatory and up-to-date pathways for clinical decision-making. Nevertheless, the complexity of processes and physical phenomena, time as well as economic constraints and not least further endeavours as well as achievements in medicine and healthcare (...) continuously raise the need to evaluate and to improve clinical decision-making. This article scrutinises if and how clinical decision-making processes are challenged by the rise of so-called artificial intelligence-driven decision support systems (AI-DSS). In a first step, this article analyses how the rise of AI-DSS will affect and transform the modes of interaction between different agents in the clinic. In a second step, we point out how these changing modes of interaction also imply shifts in the conditions of trustworthiness, epistemic challenges regarding transparency, the underlying normative concepts of agency and its embedding into concrete contexts of deployment and, finally, the consequences for (possible) ascriptions of responsibility. Third, we draw first conclusions for further steps regarding a ‘meaningful human control’ of clinical AI-DSS. (shrink)

A general class of labeled sequent calculi is investigated, and necessary and sufficient conditions are given for when such a calculus is sound and complete for a finite -valued logic if the labels are interpreted as sets of truth values. Furthermore, it is shown that any finite -valued logic can be given an axiomatization by such a labeled calculus using arbitrary "systems of signs," i.e., of sets of truth values, as labels. The number of labels needed is logarithmic in the (...) number of truth values, and it is shown that this bound is tight. (shrink)

We study the Vapnik–Chervonenkis density of definable families in certain stable first-order theories. In particular, we obtain uniform bounds on the VC density of definable families in finite $\mathrm {U}$-rank theories without the finite cover property, and we characterize those abelian groups for which there exist uniform bounds on the VC density of definable families.

Simulations are used in very different contexts and for very different purposes. An emerging development is the possibility of using simulations to obtain a more or less representative reproduction of organs or even entire persons. Such simulations are framed and discussed using the term ‘digital twin’. This paper unpacks and scrutinises the current use of such digital twins in medicine and the ideas embedded in this practice. First, the paper maps the different types of digital twins. A special focus is (...) put on the concrete challenges inherent in the interactions between persons and their digital twin. Second, the paper addresses the questions of how far a digital twin can represent a person and what the consequences of this may be. Against the background of these two analytical steps, the paper defines first conditions for digital twins to take on an ethically justifiable form of representation. (shrink)

This book considers Robert Brandom's philosophy and presents an original and exciting analysis of the semantic argument in legal argumentation.

Conditional structures lie at the heart of the sciences, humanities, and everyday reasoning. It is hence not surprising that conditional logics – logics specifically designed to account for natural language conditionals – are an active and interdisciplinary area. The present book gives a formal and a philosophical account of indicative and counterfactual conditionals in terms of Chellas-Segerberg semantics. For that purpose a range of topics are discussed such as Bennett’s arguments against truth value based semantics for indicative conditionals.

The core feature that distinguishes moods from emotions is that moods, in contrast to emotions, are diffuse and global. This article outlines a dispositional theory of moods (DTM) that accounts for this and other features of mood experience. DTM holds that moods are temporary dispositions to have or to generate particular kinds of emotion-relevant appraisals. Furthermore, DTM assumes that the cognitions and appraisals one is disposed to have in a given mood partly constitute the experience of mood. This article outlines (...) a number of implications of DTM (e.g., regarding the noncognitive causation and rationality of moods) and summarizes empirical results supporting the theory. (shrink)

We investigate interpolation properties of many-valued propositional logics related to continuous t-norms. In case of failure of interpolation, we characterize the minimal interpolating extensions of the languages. For finite-valued logics, we count the number of interpolating extensions by Fibonacci sequences.

This volume explores the relation between legal reasoning and logic from both a historical and a systematic perspective. The topics addressed include, among others, conditional legal acts, disjunctions in legal acts, presumptions and conjectures, conflicts of values, Jørgensen´s Dilemma, the Rhetor´s Dilemma, the theory of legal fictions and the categorization of contracts. The unifying problematic of these contributions concerns the conditional structures and, more particularly, the relationship between legal theory and legal reasoning in the context of conditions.

Trust is one of the big buzzwords in debates about the shaping of society, democracy, and emerging technologies. For example, one prominent idea put forward by the High‐Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence appointed by the European Commission is that artificial intelligence should be trustworthy. In this essay, we explore the notion of trust and argue that both proponents and critics of trustworthy AI have flawed pictures of the nature of trust. We develop an approach to understanding trust in AI (...) that does not conceive of trust merely as an accelerator for societal acceptance of AI technologies. Instead, we argue, trust is granted through leaps of faith. For this reason, trust remains precarious, fragile, and resistant to promotion through formulaic approaches. We also highlight the significance of distrust in societal deliberation, as it is relevant to trust in various and intricate ways. Among the fruitful aspects of distrust is that it enables individuals to forgo technology if desired, to constrain its power, and to exercise meaningful human control. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 80-99, January 2022.

Drawing upon research in philosophical logic, linguistics and cognitive science, this study explores how our ability to use and understand language depends upon our capacity to keep track of complex features of the contexts in which we converse.

A uniform construction for sequent calculi for finite-valued first-order logics with distribution quantifiers is exhibited. Completeness, cut-elimination and midsequent theorems are established. As an application, an analog of Herbrand’s theorem for the four-valued knowledge-representation logic of Belnap and Ginsberg is presented. It is indicated how this theorem can be used for reasoning about knowledge bases with incomplete and inconsistent information.

This paper argues that data-driven medicine gives rise to a particular normative challenge. Against the backdrop of a distinction between the good and the right, harnessing personal health data towards the development and refinement of data-driven medicine is to be welcomed from the perspective of the good. Enacting solidarity drives progress in research and clinical practice. At the same time, such acts of sharing could—especially considering current developments in big data and artificial intelligence—compromise the right by leading to injustices and (...) affecting concrete modes of individual self-determination. In order to address this potential tension, two key elements for ethical reflection on data-driven medicine are proposed: the controllability of information flows, including technical infrastructures that are conducive towards controllability, and a paradigm shift towards output-orientation in governance and policy. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that relying on the testimony of others in normative questions is in some way problematic. In this paper, I consider whether we should be troubled by deference in democratic politics. I argue that deference is less problematic in impure cases of political deference, and most non-ideal cases of political deference are impure. To establish the second point, I rely on empirical research from political psychology. I also outline two principled reasons why we should expect political deference (...) to be untroubling: political problems are difficult and require a division of epistemic labour; furthermore, there is value in exercising epistemic solidarity with those one shares an identity or interests with. (shrink)

Any intermediate propositional logic can be extended to a calculus with epsilon- and tau-operators and critical formulas. For classical logic, this results in Hilbert’s $\varepsilon $ -calculus. The first and second $\varepsilon $ -theorems for classical logic establish conservativity of the $\varepsilon $ -calculus over its classical base logic. It is well known that the second $\varepsilon $ -theorem fails for the intuitionistic $\varepsilon $ -calculus, as prenexation is impossible. The paper investigates the effect of adding critical $\varepsilon $ - (...) and $\tau $ -formulas and using the translation of quantifiers into $\varepsilon $ - and $\tau $ -terms to intermediate logics. It is shown that conservativity over the propositional base logic also holds for such intermediate ${\varepsilon \tau }$ -calculi. The “extended” first $\varepsilon $ -theorem holds if the base logic is finite-valued Gödel–Dummett logic, and fails otherwise, but holds for certain provable formulas in infinite-valued Gödel logic. The second $\varepsilon $ -theorem also holds for finite-valued first-order Gödel logics. The methods used to prove the extended first $\varepsilon $ -theorem for infinite-valued Gödel logic suggest applications to theories of arithmetic. (shrink)

It is a widely shared view among philosophers of science that the theory-dependence (or theory-ladenness) of observations is worrying, because it can bias empirical tests in favour of the tested theories. These doubts are taken to be dispelled if an observation is influenced by a theory independent of the tested theory and thus circularity is avoided, while (partially) circular tests are taken to require special attention. Contrary to this consensus, it is argued that the epistemic value of theory-dependent tests has (...) nothing to do with the circularity or non-circularity of the test, but is instead based on the minimal empiricality and reliability of observations. Since theory-dependence does not in general prevent observations fulfilling these requirements, it should not be regarded as a phenomenon that is basically detrimental, but as neutral with respect to successful scientific knowledge gathering. (shrink)

We introduce Gentzen calculi for intuitionistic logic extended with an existence predicate. Such a logic was first introduced by Dana Scott, who provided a proof system for it in Hilbert style. We prove that the Gentzen calculus has cut elimination in so far that all cuts can be restricted to very simple ones. Applications of this logic to Skolemization, truth value logics and linear frames are also discussed.

In: M. Carrier, D. Howard & J. Kourany (eds), Science and the Social: Knowledge, Epistemic Demands, and Social Values, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press (im Erscheinen).

The current global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deep and multidimensional crisis across all sectors of society. As countries contemplate their mobility and social-distancing policy restrictions, we have a unique opportunity to re-imagine the deliberative frameworks and value priorities in our food systems. Pre-pandemic food systems at global, national, regional and local scales already needed revision to chart a common vision for sustainable and ethical food futures. Re-orientation is also needed by the relevant sciences, traditionally siloed in their disciplines (...) and without adequate attention paid to how the food system problem is variously framed by diverse stakeholders according to their values. From the transdisciplinary perspective of food ethics, we argue that a post-pandemic scheme focused on bottom-up, regional, cross-sectoral and non-partisan deliberation may provide the re-orientation and benchmarks needed for not only more sustainable, but also more ethical food futures. (shrink)

Opponents to consciousness in fish argue that fish do not feel pain because they do not have a neocortex, which is a necessary condition for feeling pain. A common counter-argument appeals to the multiple realizability of pain: while a neocortex might be necessary for feeling pain in humans, pain might be realized differently in fish. This paper argues, first, that it is impossible to find a criterion allowing us to demarcate between plausible and implausible cases of multiple realization of pain (...) without running into a circular argument. Second, opponents to consciousness in fish cannot be provided with reasons to believe in the multiple realizability of pain. I conclude that the debate on the existence of pain in fish is impossible to settle by relying on the multiple realization argument. (shrink)

Newtons experimentum crucis hat ein komplementares Gegenstück, d.h. ein Experiment, in dem die Rollen von Licht und Schatten genau ausgetauscht sind. Statt wie Newton in der Dunkelkammer zu experimentieren, müssen wir das Komplement des experimentum crucis in einer Streulichtkammer aufbauen (deren Wände sog. Lambertstrahler sind). Wenn es dieses umgestülpte Experiment wirklich gibt, dann liefert es für jeden newtonischen Beweis einen umgestülpten Gegenbeweis, dessen Konklusion die Heterogenitat der Schatten wäre (also die Behauptung, dass nicht weißes Licht, sondern schwarze Schatten eine heterogene (...) Mischung verschiedenfarbiger Strahlen mit unterschiedlichen Brechungseigenschaften seien). Dass Newtons experimentum crucis in diesem Sinne umgestülpt werden kann, wird von Newtons eigener Theorie impliziert. Mehr noch, inzwischen ist der empirische Nachweis der Umstülpung gelungen. (shrink)

In recent years, inverse spectra were investigated with imaging optics and a quantitative description with radiometric units was suggested. It could be shown that inverse spectra complement each other additively to a constant intensity level. Since optical intensity in radiometric units is a power area density, it can be expected that energy densities of inverse spectra also fulfill an inversion equation and complement each other. In this contribution we report findings on a measurement of the power area density of inverse (...) spectra for the near ultraviolet, visible and the infrared spectral range. They show the existence of corresponding spectral regions ultra-yellow and infra-cyan in the inverted spectrum and thereby present additional experimental evidence for equivalence of inverse spectra beyond the visible range. (shrink)

Transdisciplinarity includes the assumption that within new institutional settings, scientific research becomes more closely responsive to practical problems and user needs and is therefore often subject to considerable application pressure. This raises the question whether transdisciplinarity affects the epistemic standards and the fruitfulness of research. Case studies show how user-orientation and epistemic innovativeness can be combined. While the modeling involved in all cases under consideration was local and focused primarily on features of immediate practical relevance, it was informed by theoretical (...) insights from basic research. Conversely, industrial research turns out sometimes to produce theoretical understanding. These findings highlight an interactive relationship between science and technology (moderate emergentism), which is distinct from the traditional view of a one-sided dependence of technology on science (cascade model) and from the newly received independence account (emergentism). (shrink)

Resultant moral luck occurs whenever aspects of an agent’s moral responsibility are affected by luck pertaining to the outcomes of their actions. Many authors reject the existence of moral luck in this sense, but they do so in different ways. Michael Zimmerman argues that resultant luck affects the scope of moral responsibility, but not its degree. That is, it affects what agents are responsible for, but not how responsible they are. Andrew Khoury takes a more resolute approach, arguing that both (...) the scope and the degree of moral responsibility are free from resultant luck. -/- In this paper, I criticize both accounts and develop an alternative. I argue, first, that Khoury’s approach leads to an implausibly far-reaching error-theory about moral responsibility. Second, Zimmerman’s account cannot account for all the ways in which moral responsibility comes in degrees. Third, these problems can be overcome by introducing a distinction between two concepts of responsibility that both come with scope and degree. The first concept I call internal responsibility, as it applies exclusively to agent-internal factors. The second concept I call external responsibility, as it applies to (partly) agent-external factors such as actions and their outcomes. Given this distinction, we can avoid the problems of Khoury’s as well as Zimmerman’s accounts while preserving the central intuition behind the rejection of resultant moral luck. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the new Tweety puzzle. The original Tweety puzzle was addressed by approaches in non-monotonic logic, which aim to adequately represent the Tweety case, namely that Tweety is a penguin and, thus, an exceptional bird, which cannot fly, although in general birds can fly. The new Tweety puzzle is intended as a challenge for probabilistic theories of epistemic states. In the first part of the paper we argue against monistic Bayesians, who assume that epistemic states can (...) at any given time be adequately described by a single subjective probability function. We show that monistic Bayesians cannot provide an adequate solution to the new Tweety puzzle, because this requires one to refer to a frequency-based probability function. We conclude that monistic Bayesianism cannot be a fully adequate theory of epistemic states. In the second part we describe an empirical study, which provides support for the thesis that monistic Bayesianism is also inadequate as a descriptive theory of cognitive states. In the final part of the paper we criticize Bayesian approaches in cognitive science, insofar as their monistic tendency cannot adequately address the new Tweety puzzle. We, further, argue against monistic Bayesianism in cognitive science by means of a case study. In this case study we show that Oaksford and Chater’s (2007, 2008) model of conditional inference—contrary to the authors’ theoretical position—has to refer also to a frequency-based probability function. (shrink)

We investigate a lattice of conditional logics described by a Kripke type semantics, which was suggested by Chellas and Segerberg – Chellas–Segerberg (CS) semantics – plus 30 further principles. We (i) present a non-trivial frame-based completeness result, (ii) a translation procedure which gives one corresponding trivial frame conditions for arbitrary formula schemata, and (iii) non-trivial frame conditions in CS semantics which correspond to the 30 principles.

This paper argues that ceteris paribus (cp) laws exist based on a Lewisian best system analysis of lawhood (BSA). Furthermore, it shows that a BSA faces a second trivialization problem besides the one identified by Lewis. The first point concerns an argument against cp laws by Earman and Roberts. The second point aims to help making some assumptions of the BSA explicit. To address the second trivialization problem, a restriction in terms of natural logical constants is proposed that allows one (...) to describe regularities, as specified by basic generics (e.g. ‘birds can fly’) and universals (e.g. ‘all birds can fly’). It is argued that cp laws rather than strict laws might be a part of the the best system of such a regularity-based BSA, since sets of cp laws can be both (a) simpler and (b) stronger when reconstructed as generic non-material conditionals. Yet, if sets of cp laws might be a part of the best system of a BSA and thus qualify as proper laws of nature, it seems reasonable to conclude that at least some cp laws qualify as proper laws of nature. (shrink)