laws of nature do have a privileged role in physical explanation, but that privilege is due to their simplicity and generality, not to some mysterious quasi-causal power they exert over matter. The fact that a certain generalization is a law of nature does not account for the truth and explanatory power of the generalization, any more than the fact that a soldier has won the Medal of Honor accounts for his or her courage in combat.
That’s a self-defeating analogy. So long as the process of pinning a medal on someone is epistemically valid, it does indicate that they have courage—it doesn’t cause it , but it reflects it. Likewise, the process of identifying some facet of nature as a “law” , in the sense of inscribing it onto your favourite map, is evidence that there is some corresponding facet of nature out in the territory , so long as your epistemology is valid.
On the other hand, the idea that laws are nothing but descriptions gives us no reason to think that the future will continue to resemble the past, because there is no causal arrow going from the map to the territory. That’s why “laws are descriptions” isn’t universally accepted.
That’s a self-defeating analogy. So long as the process of pinning a medal on someone is epistemically valid, it does indicate that they have courage—it doesn’t cause it , but it reflects it. Likewise, the process of identifying some facet of nature as a “law” , in the sense of inscribing it onto your favourite map, is evidence that there is some corresponding facet of nature out in the territory , so long as your epistemology is valid.
On the other hand, the idea that laws are nothing but descriptions gives us no reason to think that the future will continue to resemble the past, because there is no causal arrow going from the map to the territory. That’s why “laws are descriptions” isn’t universally accepted.