The Metaphysical Necessity of Natural Laws.

Abstract

I begin by defending condition (i) against five objections (section 2). Following this, I show that the theory that laws obtain contingently encounters three problems that are solved by the theory that laws are metaphysically necessary (section 3). In section 3, I criticize the regularity theory of natural laws and the universals theory of Armstrong, Dretske and Tooley, and also show how the metaphysical theory solves the \textquotedblleft{}inference problem\textquotedblright that Van Fraassen (1989) posed for any theory of natural laws