In this paper I argue that it is not a priori that all the laws of nature are contingent. I assume that the fundamental laws are contingent and show that some non-trivial, a posteriori, non-basic laws may nonetheless be necessary in the sense of having no counterinstances in any possible world. I consider a law LS (such as 'salt dissolves in water') that concerns a substance S. Kripke's arguments concerning constitution show that the existence of S requires that a certain (...) deeper level law or variants thereof hold. At the same time, that law and its variants may each entail the truth of LS. Thus the existence of S entails LS. Consequently there is no world in which S exists and fails to obey LS. I consider the conditions concerning the fundamental laws that would make this phenomenon ubiquitous. I conclude with some consequences for metaphysics. (shrink)

In Bird 2001 I argued that a law that might seem to many to be contingent is in fact necessary. In short the argument is this. Given the existence of salt and water, Coulomb’s law of electrostatic attraction is sufficient to make the former dissolve in the latter. So any possible world in which salt failed to dissolve in water would be one in which Coulomb’s law is false. However, it is also the case that the existence of salt depends (...) on Coulomb’s law. If Coulomb’s law is false then salt cannot exist. So there is no possible world in which salt exists and in which it does not dissolve in water. (shrink)

Contingentism, generally contrasted with law necessitarianism, is the view that the laws of nature are contingent. It is often coupled with the claim that their contingency is knowable a priori. This paper considers Bird's (2001, 2002, 2005, 2007) arguments for the thesis that, necessarily, salt dissolves in water; and it defends his view against Beebee's (2001) and Psillos's (2002) contingentist objections. A new contingentist objection is offered and several reasons for scepticism about its success are raised. It is concluded that (...) certain higher-level laws describing the behaviours of molecular compounds may be necessary due to their dependence on underlying physical laws, and that the modal status of laws of nature cannot be determined a priori, as the structural features of the substances and properties they govern must first be investigated. (shrink)

Is the world internally connected by a web of necessary connections or is everything loose and independent? Followers of David Hume accept the latter by upholding Hume’s Dictum, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Roughly put, anything can coexist with anything else, and anything can fail to coexist with anything else. Hume put it like this: “There is no object which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves.” Since Hume’s (...) day, Hume’s Dictum has played a major role in philosophy, especially in contemporary metaphysics. In ruling out necessary connections, Hume’s Dictum implies that causal relations and the laws of nature are contingent. It makes other demands on our metaphysics of science as well; for example, it places restrictions on our metaphysics of counterfactuals, dispositions, and explanation. The principle has applications in other areas too. Hume’s Dictum places constraints on our theories of abstract objects and moral properties. For example, Hume’s Dictum rules out the view that moral properties are distinct from, but necessarily connected to, non-moral properties. While Hume’s Dictum is a prominent principle in metaphysics, few Humeans have defended the principle at length. It is assumed more often than it is argued for. As a result, Hume’s Dictum no longer enjoys the reputation it once did. It’s common to hear complaints about the lack of arguments in support of Hume’s Dictum. Moreover, philosophers are increasingly willing to defend views that are at odds with Hume’s Dictum. A striking example of this is the recent explosion of interest in views that take causal relations and the laws of nature to be necessary. Humeans can no longer afford to be complacent. An extended defense of Hume’s Dictum is called for, and that’s what this dissertation aims to offer. This dissertation has three parts. In the first part, I lay out some preliminaries and offer a precise formulation of Hume’s Dictum. In the second part, I develop three arguments in favor of Hume’s Dictum. In the final part, I defend Hume’s Dictum against objections. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to articulate dispositonal essentialism (DE) as a viable position in the discussions considering properties and laws of nature. In the first part of the article there are given several „must have” trades of properties in DE. They are followed by the conceptions themselves. The last part of the article brings a little insight about ceteris paribus laws in DE.

Two related claims have lately garnered currency: dispositional essentialism—the view that some or all properties, or some or all fundamental properties, are essentially dispositional; and the claim that laws of nature (or again, many or the fundamental ones) are metaphysically necessary. I have argued elsewhere (On the metaphysical contingency of laws of nature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002) that the laws of nature do not have a mind-independent metaphysical necessity, but recent developments on dispositions have given these ideas a new (...) vibrancy and made them the topic of more focused discussion. So I would like to revisit this, arguing that the new work, as interesting and important as it is to our understanding of fundamental properties, powers and dispositions, should not change our minds about metaphysical necessity. One should still think necessity is conceptually or conventionally grounded. I do not argue that laws of nature are not necessary, nor that properties do not have dispositional essences, but only that if these are the case, then, like other de re or empirical necessities, they have no metaphysical weight and are based in our rules or decisions about how to talk about the world. We may have excellent reasons to talk and think in this way—but these reasons do not include, require or provide evidence of mind-independent metaphysical necessity or essences. (shrink)

forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Proponents of physical intentionality argue that the classic hallmarks of intentionality highlighted by Brentano are also found in purely physical powers. Critics worry that this idea is metaphysically obscure at best, and at worst leads to panpsychism or animism. I examine the debate in detail, finding both confusion and illumination in the physical intentionalist thesis. Analysing a number of the canonical features of intentionality, I show that they all point to one overarching phenomenon of which both the mental and the (...) physical are kinds, namely finality. This is the finality of ‘final causes’, the long-discarded idea of universal action for an end to which recent proponents of physical intentionality are in fact pointing whether or not they realise it. I explain finality in terms of the concept of specific indifference, arguing that in the case of the mental, specific indifference is realised by the process of abstraction, which has no correlate in the case of physical powers. This analysis, I conclude, reveals both the strength and weakness of rational creatures such as us, as well as demystifying the way in which powers work. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss and evaluate different arguments for the view that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. I conclude that essentialist arguments from the nature of natural kinds fail to establish that essences are ontologically more basic than laws, and fail to offer an a priori argument for the necessity of all causal laws. Similar considerations carry across to the argument from the dispositionalist view of properties, which may end up placing unreasonable constraints on property identity across (...) possible worlds. None of my arguments preclude the possibility that the laws may turn out to be metaphysically necessary after all, but I argue that this can only be established by a posteriori scientific investigation. I therefore argue for what may seem to be a surprising conclusion: that a fundamental metaphysical question – the modal status of laws of nature – depends on empirical facts rather than purely on a priori reasoning. (shrink)

In this thesis, I argue that physicalism should be understood to be the view that mental properties are realized by physical properties. In doing this, I explore what the realization relation might be. Since realization is the relation that should help us formulate physicalism, I suggest that the theoretical role of realization consists in explaining some of the things that physicalists wish to explain. These are: How are mental properties metaphysically necessitated by physical properties? How are mental properties causally efficacious? (...) A theory of realization should provide resources for answering these questions. Having identified the theoretical role of realization, I discuss several theories of realization, but then focus on the subset view of realization. According to the subset view, a property P realizes a property Q if and only if the causal powers of Q are a proper subset of the causal powers of P. I argue that the realization relation as it is formulated by the subset view is a promising candidate to play the theoretical role that I want realization to play. I then investigate how this theoretical role is occupied. In doing so, I provide a general metaphysical framework that the defenders of the subset view can appeal to. This framework specifies in what ways properties are related to their causal powers. Discussing some problems that the subset view faces, I propose my own version of the subset view. I argue that a property P realizes a property Q if and only if the causal powers of Q are a proper subset of the causal powers of P, and P is more fundamental than Q. Thanks to the requirement that a realized property is less fundamental than its realizers, two things that the original version of the subset view cannot explain are guaranteed: first, fundamental properties are not realized; second, arbitrary conjunctions of properties do not realize their conjuncts. By showing how a theory of realization can help us explain some of the things that physicalists typically wish to explain, I also show that a non-reductive variety of physicalism does not face the problems that it is commonly thought to face. (shrink)