Other things equal, the chances improve

Paul M. Pietroski

pp. 259-273

in: Mathieu Marion, Robert S. Cohen (eds), Québec studies in the philosophy of science, part I, Berlin, Springer, 1995

Abstract

The world, or rather that part of it with which we are acquainted, exhibits as we must all agree a good deal of regularity of succession. I contend that over and above that it exhibits no feature called causal necessity, but that we make sentences called causal laws… and [we] say that a fact asserted in a proposition which is an instance of causal law is a case of causal necessity (p. 160).