Abstract

I provide a novel picture of the relationship between laws of nature and causation which removes many of the perplexities which are persistent in the literature. I argue that the standard view of the content of laws which has come down from David Hume, that is, the view that individual laws report generic, local causal sequences, has obscured the way laws figure into the tracking and explanation of causal processes. I replace such a view with the more accurate picture of the construction of evolution equations from various "law recipes" which are used by physicists. This examination yields several important distinctions between types of laws which are not captured by the standard covering law distinctions--developed largely by Carl Hempel--between universal and statistical laws, and laws of coexistence and laws of succession. Moreover, these new distinctions which I provide are vital for an accurate understanding of the role which laws play in causal explanation. Thus, the result is a sophisticated "covering-law theory" which lacks the disadvantages usually associated with that theory but which nonetheless captures the core idea that laws underwrite causal processes. ;Once the way in which laws are used to describe causal processes is properly understood, I focus my attention upon critiques of the covering-law model. For instance, a number of philosophers have held that the laws of nature are in conflict with causation. Bertrand Russell argued that the proper view about causation was "eliminitivism," the view that all causal talk should be eliminated because physics replaces causal talk with laws. More recently, Nancy Cartwright has taken exactly the opposite point of view: There is no problem with causation; the problem is with laws, I trace both views to their source in the Humean view of laws described above. Moreover, the more accurate view which I provide in terms of law recipes is not subject to the objection of Cartwright and Russell and shows in detail where such views have gone astray.