Authors
Michael Tooley
Publication date
1977/12
Journal
Canadian journal of Philosophy
Volume
7
Issue
4
Pages
667-698
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Description
This paper is concerned with the question of the truth conditions of nomological statements. My fundamental thesis is that it is possible to set out an acceptable, non Circular account of the truth conditions of laws and nomological statements if and only if relations among universals — that is, among properties and relations, construed realistically — are taken as the truth-makers for such statements.My discussion will be restricted to strictly universal, nonstatistical laws. The reason for this limitation is not that I feel there is anything dubious about the concept of a statistical law, nor that I feel that basic laws cannot be statistical. The reason is methodological. The case of strictly universal, nonstatistical laws would seem to be the simplest case. If the problem of the truth conditions of laws can be solved for this simple subcase, one can then investigate whether the solution can be extended to the more complex cases. I …
Total citations
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Scholar articles
M Tooley - Canadian journal of Philosophy, 1977