Abstract

Hume defined ‘cause’ three times over. The two principal definitions (constant conjunction, felt determination) provide the anchors for the two main strands of the modem empiricist accounts of laws of nature 1 while the third (the counter factual definition 2) may be seen as the inspiration of the nonHumean necessitarian analyses. Corresponding to the felt determination definition is the account of laws that emphasizes human attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Latter day weavers of this strand include Nelson Goodman, A. J. Ayer, and Nicholas Rescher. In Fact, Fiction and Forecast Goodman writes: “I want to emphasize the Humean idea that rather than a sentence being used for prediction because it is a law, it is called a law because it is used for prediction” (1955, p. 62). In “What is a law of nature?”, Ayer explains that the difference between ‘generalizations of fact’ and ‘generalizations of law’ “lies not so much on the side of facts which make them true, as in the attitude of those who put them forward” (1956, p. 162). And in a similar vein, Rescher maintains that lawfulness is “mind-dependent”; it is not something which is discovered but which is supplied: “Lawfulness is not found in or extracted from the evidence but superadded to it. Lawfulness is a matter of imputation” (1970, p. 107). By contrast, the constant conjunction definition promotes the view that laws are to be analyzed in terms of the de re characteristics of regularities, independently of the attitudes and actions of actual or potential knowers.