It is the Business of Laws to Govern
Schaffer, J
Dialectica 70(4): 577-588
2016
ISSN/ISBN: 0012-2017 DOI: 10.1111/1746-8361.12165Document Number: 353355
Non-Humean accounts of lawhood are said to founder on the Inference Problem, which is the problem of saying how laws that go beyond the regularities can entail the regularities. I argue that the Inference Problem has a simple solution – the Axiomatic Solution – on which the non-Humean only needs to outfit her laws with a law-to-regularity axiom. There is a remaining Epistemic Bulge, as to why one should believe that the posit-so-axiomatized is to be found in nature, but the non-Humean can flatten the bulge. Lawhood serves as a case study of how fundamental posits can do their business.