The variation of man`s laws shows that we know little about ourselves and what truly universal moral norms are or should be. On the other hand, the apparent certainty of the laws of nature seems to give the laws of nature a sense of trust and purpose that has inspired many movements to use them as the basis for all laws, including the laws of man. The Enlightenment is, of course, a well-known example. Fortunately, the quantum revolution of the early twentieth century quickly showed that the pride of a watchmaking determinism was greatly exaggerated; There is uncertainty in the universe and any hope of making physics an oracle is doomed to failure. As mentioned in the objection, Harre and Madden are quite willing to admit that human flesh exposed to fire could be instantly turned into stone; Yet they stubbornly refuse to admit that unprotected human flesh cannot be burned when exposed to fire. But why this asymmetry here? None of these events could be explained by an appeal to the nature of fire, human flesh and stone – or, therefore, by a call to natural tendencies that were effective at the time in question – at least not if we assume that our current scientific understanding of these natures is essentially correct. Both events seem to involve counteracting the same natural deterministic tendency, namely the tendency of the world to say that this human flesh is burned at the time in question. So why should any of them be considered metaphysically possible? However, a compatibility might have a problem with inwagen`s process because you can`t change the past because your arguments focus on that. Compatibility focused on plans for the future could apply: this is an area on which legislation needs to be worked. Armstrong and Dretske make substantive claims about what can and cannot be confirmed by the authorities: Roughly speaking, Homäan laws cannot, laws can, and universals can. But at least these claims can`t be entirely true. The Humean laws can`t do that? As the discussion above shows, Sober, Lange and others have argued that even generalizations known to be random can be confirmed by their cases. Dretske and Armstrong need a plausible and sufficiently solid premise that combines the law with the ability to affirm, and it is not clear whether there is one.
Here`s the basic problem: As many authors have noted (e.g., Sober 1988, 98; van Fraassen, 1987, 255), the confirmation of a hypothesis or its untested instances will always be sensitive to the present substantive beliefs. So much so that with substantive beliefs of the right kind, almost anything can be confirmed, regardless of its status as a law or whether it resembles a law. Therefore, it will be difficult to formulate a plausible principle that describes the relationship between laws and the problem of induction. Some (including Albert Einstein) argue that our inability to predict more than probabilities is simply due to ignorance. [66] The idea is that beyond the conditions and laws that we can observe or derive, there are also hidden factors or « hidden variables » that absolutely determine the order in which photons reach the detector screen. They argue that the course of the universe is absolutely determined, but that people are excluded from the knowledge of the determining factors. So, they say, it just seems like things are happening in a purely probabilistic way. In reality, they are absolutely deterministic. In fact, for a Best System account, we should expect such cases to occur. Be our classical electrodynamic theory T. Since the possible world that is empty also fills Maxwell`s equations, it is physically possible according to formulation (A).
But this empty world may not be physically possible after formulation (B) and a report on the best system, because the deductive system that best balances informational capacity and simplicity in the empty world may simply contain the statement that « the world is empty. » Maxwell`s equations are true in this empty world, but they are not laws of it, because they are not simple enough given the alternatives. In their article mentioned above, Callender and Cohen proposed to relativize the ratio of the best system to certain decisions of fundamental types or basic predicates. They argue that, while there is indeed no objective point of view for judging simplicity, informality and the best balance, such a point of view is also not necessary to find a satisfactory presentation of laws. They consider that a true generalization is a law relating to a choice of basic types or predicates when the generalization appears in all the best systems immanent in relation to these basic species or predicates. They take the theory of relativity as an advantage of their account; With his help, they claim to be able to solve many problems that afflict the traditional view of the best system, such as the problem of immanent comparisons. In addition, they see Relativized Best System or RBS able to explain the laws in the specialized sciences. What are the two worlds of having the same story at any given time? A variety of answers can be given to this question in terms of content, each of which is associated with an unmistakable answer to the challenge of logical determinism. My own Ockhamist response has been elaborated elsewhere,7 but it might be worth emphasizing here, as I will assume in the discussion of natural modalities. For example, if generations of philosophers have argued over whether physical determinism excludes the existence of free will (e.g., Honderich), they have dealt with these latter laws, the laws of nature themselves. The failure of the determinism of a theory can still indicate serious problems, especially if there is another theory that describes the same phenomena that is deterministic.
Although there have been recent attempts to study how the failure of the determinism of one theory can be cured by another (see [15]), the literature still assumes that the determinism of a particular physical theory can be assessed by looking at that theory alone.