Obviously, it does not. But what makes the difference? Both regularity statements (L1 and L2) are built according to the exact same syntactical procedure from the evidence statements. Therefore, it does not seem to be for a syntactical reason that B1 confirms L1 but B2 fails to confirm L2. Rather, the reason is that statements like L1 are lawlike, whereas statements like L2 at best express accidentally true generalizations. Lawlike statements, in contrast to accidentally true general statements, are confirmed by their instances and support counterfactuals. L1 supports the counterfactual claim that if this thing I have in my hand were a piece of copper, it would conduct electricity. In contrast, supposing that it is indeed true, L2 would not support that if an arbitrary man were here in the room, he would be a third son. To tell which statements are lawlike and which statements are not is therefore of great importance in the philosophy of science.  A satisfactory account of induction (or corroboration --   see the discussion of Popper in the entry on   the problem of induction)  as well as explanation and prediction requires this distinction.   Goodman, however, shows that this is extremely hard to get.