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Laws and Dispositions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Andreas Hüttemann
Andreas Hüttemann*
Affiliation:
Abteilung Philosophie, Universität Bielefeld
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Abstract

Laws are supposed to tell us how physical systems actually behave. The analysis of an important part of physical practice—abstraction—shows, however, that laws describe the behavior of physical systems under very special circumstances, namely when they are isolated. Nevertheless, laws are applied in cases of non-isolation as well. This practice requires an explanation. It is argued that one has to assume that physical systems have dispositions. I take these to be innocuous from an empiricist's standpoint because they can—at least in principle—be measured. Laws can be applied whenever such a disposition is present, they describe how the physical system would behave if the disposition were manifest.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 121 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1998

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Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Abteilung Philosophie, Universität Bielefeld, Postfach 100131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany.

‡

I would like to thank M. Carrier, L. Röska-Hardy, and two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.

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