In this paper, it is argued that, contrary to some suggestions in the philosophical literature, dispositions cannot replace laws in the description of the physical world. If for a certain type of physical situation a well-working law-based account is available, then it is not possible to describe that situation equally well in terms of dispositions. Using an example consisting of four laws (Coulomb’s law, Newton’s law of gravitation, the rule for the composition of forces and Newton’s second law), it is shown that when one attempts to replace a law-based account with a disposition-based account, the latter turns out to be either less informative or inferior with respect to theoretical virtues, such as simplicity, unification, non-triviality of predictions and explanatory power. Laws are also better suited to deal with interactions and their screening off. Using inference to the best explanation, one can conclude from this comparison that it is laws rather than dispositions that should be included in our ontological picture of nature.

本文认为，与哲学文献中的一些建议相反，倾向不能取代物理世界描述中的规律。如果对于某种类型的实际情况，有一个运作良好的基于​​法律的账户，那么就不可能在处置方面同样好地描述该情况。用一个由四个定律（库仑定律、牛顿万有引力定律、力的合成规则和牛顿第二定律）组成的例子表明，当人们试图用基于处置的帐户取代基于法律的帐户时，事实证明，后者要么信息量较少，要么在理论优点方面较差，例如简单性、统一性、预测的重要性和解释力。法律也更适合处理互动及其屏蔽问题。通过对最佳解释的推论，人们可以从这一比较中得出结论，我们的自然本体论图景中应该包含的是法则，而不是倾向。