(1) Department of Philosophy, University Of Bristol, 9 Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1TB, U.K
Abstract:
This paper sketches a dispositionalist conception of laws and shows how the dispositionalist should respond to certain objections.
The view that properties are essentially dispositional is able to provide an account of laws that avoids the problems that face the two views of laws (the regularity
and the contingent nomic necessitation views) that regard properties as categorical and laws as contingent. I discuss and
reject the objections that (i) this view makes laws necessary whereas they are contingent; (ii) this view cannot account for
certain kinds of laws of nature and their properties.