The Ultimate Argument Against Dispositional Monist Accounts of Laws

Analysis 72 (4):714-722 (2012)
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Abstract

Bird argues that Armstrong’s necessitarian conception of physical modality and laws of nature generates a vicious regress with respect to necessitation. We show that precisely the same regress afflicts Bird’s dispositional-monist theory, and indeed, related views, such as that of Mumford & Anjum. We argue that dispositional monism is basically Armstrongian necessitarianism modified to allow for a thesis about property identity

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Author Profiles

Stephen Barker
Nottingham University
Benjamin Smart
University of Johannesburg

Citations of this work

Reconsidering the Dispositional Essentialist Canon.Samuel Kimpton-Nye - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (10):3421-3441.
Modal Idealism.David Builes - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind.
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Laws of Nature: Necessary and Contingent.Samuel Kimpton-Nye - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (4):875-895.

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References found in this work

What is a Law of Nature?D. M. Armstrong - 1983 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Sydney Shoemaker.
Nature's Metaphysics: Laws and Properties.Alexander Bird - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Laws of nature.Fred I. Dretske - 1977 - Philosophy of Science 44 (2):248-268.
The nature of laws.Michael Tooley - 1977 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (4):667-98.

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