Nomo(theo)logical Necessity

Abstract

The issues of just what laws of nature are and what makes statements law-like have been more discussed than advanced. After exploring the general area and uncovering some difficulties which, I suspect, make the case even knottier than generally imagined, I argue that certain resources available only to the theist-in particular, counterfactuals of God's freedom-may provide the materials needed for constructing solutions.

Some Problems of Philosophy

“…However, in the 1960s, the argument was rejuvenated, in a form that (perhaps) avoids Kant's criticism, by Norman Malcom (1911-1990. Malcolm suggests that although existence may not be a predicate, necessary existence is a predicate.…”

“…In a similar line of thought, Del Ratzch advances an argument for the existence of God. However, his argument focuses on the subjunctive feature of the types of natural law statements that one finds in science(Ratzsch 1990). Non-Standard Arguments for God's Existence | 135…”

Nontraditional arguments for theism

“…There is a long history of thought on the relationship between God and laws (see brief discussion and references in Koperski, ), but F. R. Tennant () was one of the first to highlight their potential as evidence for theism. The first to develop an analytically rigorous theistic argument from laws, however, is Ratzsch (), who argues that problems which otherwise beset widely‐held accounts of laws as universally quantified subjunctives can be avoided by thinking of them as counterfactuals of freedom . But obviously, this would require a free agent with the stability of character and power to decree natural laws—viz., God.…”

Monotheism and Human Nature

“…On laws as divine intentions, seeRatzsch (1987).62 For proposals similar in spirit to the one I float here, see Brenner (forthcoming) andYang & Davis (2017).…”