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This chapter commences with the claim — which originates with Shoemaker — that fundamental natural properties are potencies, i.e., they have dispositional essences. Following Swoyer, it is explained how this dispositional essentialism about properties leads to necessitarianism about laws. Strong necessitarianism — the view that all possible laws hold in all possible worlds — is explored in detail and an ante rem conception of universals is defended against Armstrong's criticisms. It is shown how dispositional essentialism can account for ceteris paribus laws, and the question whether the fundamental laws of nature are strict or ceteris paribus is raised in the light of the earlier discussion of dispositions.

When Hosea Ballou died in 1852, belief in the supernatural rule of God apparently held sway among most American Protestants, but the idea of universal salvation remained highly suspect. Twenty years later, supernatural rule had fallen under serious question, but except among outspoken theologians and conservative evangelicals, few appear to have considered universal salvation a particularly threatening or controversial issue. Such major shifts in outlook naturally had deep and complex cultural roots that resist generalization. Yet one general point seems inescapable: the traditional focus of religious attention on the hope of eternal redemption was becoming culturally irrelevant.

This chapter defends four assumptions that will be taken for granted in the chapters to follow. None of these four assumptions is uncommon, but none is uncontroversial. One assumption is that at least some laws of nature are metaphysically contingent. Many philosophers have recently defended a version of necessitarianism about laws called scientific essentialism; this chapter argues that even if the key metaphysical theses of scientific essentialism are correct, it is still more plausible than not that some (though not all) laws of nature are contingent. For the regularities that are related to counterfactuals in the ways that are distinctive of laws must include some regularities that are contingent, even if scientific essentialism is true. The other three assumptions defended in this chapter are that laws are propositions, that laws are true, and that the logically contingent consequences of laws are laws themselves.

The classical problem of free will and determinism is a metaphysical problem that cannot, therefore, be solved through analyses of moral or evaluative notions like responsibility and agency. It is crucial to understand the metaphysical concerns of the incompatibilist, one who finds that determinism threatens free will, and it is claimed that this concern rests on a mistaken vision of the world, necessitarianism. David Hume, who defended the compatibility of free will and determinism, attacked the necessitarian metaphysic and this book is essentially a defense of his views. Hume’s particular defense of compatibilism, conditionalist compatibilism, is, however, rejected. An explanation of the dearth of defenders of the thesis of the book, labeled “Humean Compatibilism,” is offered. Brief synopses of other principal chapters are provided.

Central passages: Boethius On Interpretation II 234–5; Diogenes Laertius 7.75; Plutarch, On Stoic Self‐contradictions 1055d–f; Alexander of Aphrodisias On Fate 176.14–23. In the Stoic debate over fate and determinism, the modalities (in particular necessity and possibility) played a role in a number of different contexts. Chrysippus rejected Diodorus Cronus’ modal theory because of its built‐in necessitarian consequences. He developed his own set of modal notions, which, in themselves, do not lead to necessitarianism and which secure a necessary condition for free action—namely, the existence of occurrences that are both possible and non‐necessary (i.e. are contingent). Chrysippus’ modalities are not epistemic. Some critics of the Stoics developed arguments to show that there is a conflict between Chrysippus’ modal notions and the Stoic theory of fate. Later Stoics replied to such objections by giving an epistemic interpretation of Chrysippus’ modal concepts. Critics of the Stoics objected that fate, qua Necessity, renders all events necessary. However, this objection is not justified within Chrysippus’ philosophy.

The skeptical argument against specific statements identifying a phenomenal property with a scientific one has been criticized for overlooking two salient resources that would put an end to skepticism, resources that could allegedly be used to establish psychophysical identities. The two resources are scientific induction with correlation and scientific necessitarianism (of which scientific essentialism is a variety). Neither is capable of securing psychophysical identities. The problem is that psychophysical identities lack terms with the right de jure connections binding the terms to their designata by way of conceptual mediation. De jure connections should not be controversial and are not avoided by either the recognitional theory of reference or direct reference. The chapter concludes by embracing scientific empiricism.

This chapter develops and examines a variety of modal relationalism analogous to necessitarian accounts of laws of nature. The opening discussion characterizes such accounts of laws of nature, considers some problems that they face, and isolates a structural feature of them that is carried over to the geometric context. A geometric form of necessitarianism is developed and some of its features considered. The question whether nomic and geometric necessitarians are entitled to maintain that modal facts supervene on non‐modal facts is addressed.

Chapter two discloses how Robinson’s in-depth study of William Godwin’s Political Justice prompted his first theory of literature, published in a mid-1795 article in Benjamin Flower’s radical Cambridge Intelligencer. According to this theory, Godwin’s necessitarian philosophy had succeeded in situating truth in the moral concerns that a poet raises. Where an author’s imagination proves compatible with the laws of necessity, literature may exert a direct didactic influence on the motives governing the mind, and thus promote disinterested benevolence. Godwinism qua ‘New Philosophy of Love’, it emerges further from Robinson’s hitherto unknown draft article ‘on novels’ (1798) that he intended for John Aikin’s radical Monthly Magazine but never submitted, pervades Robinson’s formal and informal literary criticism prior to his turn to Kant. Robinson’s Godwinian criticism already comprised comparative elements, discussing, for instance, novels by Godwin himself, Thomas Holcroft, Ann Radcliffe, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, and Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, among many more.

This chapter defends a supervenience characterization of physicalism, according to which something is physical in a broad sense if it is necessitated by the fundamental physical properties in this world. Supervenience definitions have been attacked in recent years because it is claimed that some forms of emergentist dualism are consistent with supervenience. This chapter argues that this is not in fact the case. If a set of properties necessitates non-physical properties, those properties must themselves have non-physical features or dispositions. Necessary emergentism is thus not a counterexample to supervenience because it is not a case of a purely physical base necessitating dualistic properties, but instead involves a base already polluted by mentality

One of the most attractive features of quantum modal realism is the unified and explanatory theory of laws of nature which it enables. Quantum modal realism incorporates a layered model of laws which share a common underlying structure; the model includes Fundamental laws of the multiverse, fundamental laws of Everett worlds, as well as a variety of types of non-fundamental laws of Everett worlds. This layered model of laws allows for a hitherto unexpected reconciliation of the Humean and anti-Humean conceptions of lawhood, and the model also enables powerful explanations both of why laws matter to us and of how we can come to know them. This chapter sets out the new quantum modal realist theory of laws, defends it from some objections, and draws out its most important consequences.

This chapter discusses Baxter’s theory of natural law and his polemics against Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza on ethical matters. Baxter’s natural law theory drew on Francisco Suárez’s De legibus, which grounded the obligation of the natural law in the divine will and the content of the natural law in the divine wisdom. Baxter responded to the necessitarianism and natural law theories of both Hobbes and Spinoza, but engaged with Spinoza’s arguments more fully. His response is noteworthy for drawing lines of continuity between their physical and ethical views. Unlike most contemporary responses to Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus, which focused on his denial of miracles and the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, Baxter addressed Spinoza’s natural law and political theory, which was central to the argument of the Tractatus.

This chapter explores an objection to explanatory universalism, the doctrine that the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) is true or everything has an explanation. This objection is a direct argument to the conclusion that the PSR yields the existence of an omni-explainer, i.e. something that explains everything. The objection crucially relies on the assumption that explanation is dissective in its explanandum place, and its conclusion conflicts with the irreflexivity of explanation. So the chapter considers two responses to the mentioned objection. The first response consisting in restricting the irreflexivity of explanation is criticised in connection with topics in the metaphysics of grounding. The second response consisting in denying that explanation is dissective is vindicated. Finally, the chapter argues that a plausible revised version of the principle that explanation is dissective, the PSR, and the irreflexivity of explanation together yield a striking picture of our universe.

Spinoza’s causa sui poses a challenge to Kant’s attack on rational cosmology, and thereby to his attack on metaphysical rationalism as a whole. The chapter suggests the Kantian response, namely that the causa sui fails with the refutation of the ontological argument. It is argued, more generally, that the Principle of Sufficient Reason fails if existence is not a first order predicate. One problem with this answer is that Kant’s refutation of the ontological argument begs the question vis-à-vis Spinozist necessitarianism. This in turn challenges Kant’s refutation of dogmatic metaphysics as a whole. The chapter concludes developing a Kantian defense of the refutation of the ontological argument. This strategy suggests a link between the non-necessitarian assumptions of Kant’s refutation of the ontological argument (dissociating existence from thought) and his insistence on the is-ought distinction.

This chapter discusses Spinoza’s and Leibniz’s specific criticisms of Descartes’s use of his so-called “truth rule”—that is, the principle that whatever is perceived clearly and distinctly is true—and explores the relation of these criticisms to the two philosophers’ own conceptions of truth as requiring both the internal adequacy of ideas and the external correspondence of those ideas to their objects. One conclusion is that, for both Spinoza and Leibniz, the conception of truth as requiring internal adequacy of ideas explains their rejection of Descartes’s methodological skepticism. A second conclusion is that, for both philosophers, the problem of establishing that all ideas with internal adequacy must correspond with their objects can only be satisfactorily solved by embracing logical necessitarianism.

There is no contingency in the world. This chapter shows how premises that all have some plausibility in metaphysics and physics lead to this conclusion, that every true proposition is necessarily true (e.g. the proposition that there is thought). The argument turns on the necessity of laws of nature, the claim that there is no absolute distinction between laws and initial conditions, and the Everett–De Witt ‘many worlds’ hypothesis.