A Note on Scientific Essentialism, Laws of Nature, and Counterfactual Conditionals
نویسنده
چکیده
Scientific essentialism aims to account for the natural laws’ special capacity to support counterfactuals. I argue that scientific essentialism can do so only by resorting to devices that are just as ad hoc as those that essentialists accuse Humean regularity theories of employing. I conclude by offering an account of the laws’ distinctive relation to counterfactuals that portrays laws as contingent but nevertheless distinct from accidents by virtue of possessing a genuine variety of necessity.
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