Regularity Accounts of Laws
Laws of nature are true law-like generalisations. A law-like
generalisation has universal scope, e.g. 'All iron is magnetic'.
Literature
An account, with reference to some of the problems, can be found in
Hempel 1965a, pp
264-270.
Problems
Predicates
Any statement of the form "All A are B" looks like a candidate for
a general law. However, if A or B are grue-some predicates (see Goodman 1954) the
statement may translate as "All apples in this box are red", which
is not a law even if it is true. All the problems of the New Riddle
of Induction apply here.
Vacuous Laws
"All A are B" is true if there are no As. But we want to have laws
like "All bodies experiencing no net force are unaccelerated" while
excluding "All unicorns can fly".
Copyright David Chart 1998