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<p>The debate about laws of nature mainly focuses on the laws’ connection to regularities and modal facts. The much-discussed <i>inference problem</i> concerns why ‘it is a law that <i>p’</i> entails ‘<i>p’</i>. Another problem (the ‘<i>modality problem</i>’) is about the need to explain the laws’ relation to counterfactuals, causation, and dispositions. In this paper, we argue that a third problem, the ‘<i>normativity problem’</i>, should play an equally important role in the debate: A theory of laws needs to explain the laws’ distinctive significance for what agents ought to do and believe. We argue that, just like the other two problems, the normativity problem poses distinct challenges for Humeans and non-Humeans and that it should be taken into account when comparing different views of laws.</p>

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The normative force of natural laws: Humean and non-Humean accounts of nomic normativity

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年6月1日

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  • Christian Loew,
  • Siegfried Jaag,
  • Michael T. Hicks

摘要

The debate about laws of nature mainly focuses on the laws’ connection to regularities and modal facts. The much-discussed inference problem concerns why ‘it is a law that p’ entails ‘p’. Another problem (the ‘modality problem’) is about the need to explain the laws’ relation to counterfactuals, causation, and dispositions. In this paper, we argue that a third problem, the ‘normativity problem’, should play an equally important role in the debate: A theory of laws needs to explain the laws’ distinctive significance for what agents ought to do and believe. We argue that, just like the other two problems, the normativity problem poses distinct challenges for Humeans and non-Humeans and that it should be taken into account when comparing different views of laws.