Pourquoi Cartwright devrait être fondamentaliste

Cartwright has made it her role to undermine the view that true laws of nature are in force everywhere, a view she called “fundamentalism”. While doing so, Cartwright has also been developing a particular metaphysical understanding of the world in terms of capacities (or powers). My aim in this article is to reveal an internal tension with these two projects. By interpreting fundamentalism as a conjunction of four criteria about the laws of nature (JUSTNESS, UNIVERSALITY, EXACTNESS and UNITY), I’ll show why adopting Cartwright’s metaphysical view provides good reasons to be a fundamentalist. Therefore, the lesson seems to be that Cartwright – and the swathe of Cartwrightians inspired by her work – should either reject her metaphysics or else her objection to fundamentalism.