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Nomological Necessity and the Paradoxes of Confirmation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Brian Skyrms
Brian Skyrms*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Abstract

“What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in the world of speculation.”

T. S. Eliot

Burnt Norton

Some of the concerns which motivate attempts to provide a philosophical reduction of nomological necessity are briefly introduced in I. In II, Hempel's treatment of the paradoxes is contrasted with a position which holds that nomological necessity is a pragmatic dimension of laws of nature, and that this pragmatic dimension is of such a type that it prevents laws of nature from contraposing. Such a position is, however, untenable unless (i) the sense of ‘pragmatics’ at issue is specified, and the possibility of pragmatic differences resulting in differences in confirmation is defended, and (ii) a relevant pragmatic difference between contrapositives is indicated. III attempts to satisfy condition (i) by developing a new sense of pure pragmatics and argues that some remarks by Goodman and Scheffler together with work on the logic of explanation by Dr. Rescher and myself suggest that nomological contrapositives are not pragmatically equivalent (i.e. substitutable salva veritate in the pure pragmatics of an ideal scientific language). If such is the case, condition (ii) is also satisfied.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , September 1966 , pp. 230 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 by The Philosophy of Science Association

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