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Laws, Regularities and Exceptions
Author(s) -
Drewery Alice
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9329.00104
Subject(s) - epistemology , philosophy , linguistics , law , political science
Sentences of the form ‘ F s are G s’ can express laws of nature, weaker Special Science laws, and also regularities which are not a part of any explicit science. These so‐called generic sentences express nomic relationships which may have exceptions. I discuss the kinds of regularities expressed by generic sentences and argue that since they play a similar role in determining our ability to categorise and reason about the world, we should look for a unified treatment of them.