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This chapter makes a negative case for Kant's manifest realism by criticizing the leading contemporary version of maximal scientific realism, namely, scientific essentialism. It begins with a discussion of what is scientific essentialism. It presents four distinct ways that Kant would criticize scientific essentialism: the empirical inaccessibility of the microphysical world, why there is no necessary a posteriori, the antimony of essentialism, and the logical contingency of the laws of nature.

This chapter aims to work out the positive theory behind Kant's surprising claim that gold is necessarily a yellow metal, using scientific essentialism only as a critical foil. It discusses Kant's theory of natural kind terms and scientific realism in the manifest image. It explains Kant's Other Joke, which vindicates both natural science in general and fundamental physics in particular in a way that would similarly flummox the noumenal scientific realist.

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 sense in which laws are necessary is reviewed. The relationship between natural laws and natural kinds is emphasized. The relationship between natural laws and causal powers is further explored, focusing on the advantages of an approach based on the four-category ontology over alternative theories of these matters. The claim of scientific essentialists that natural laws are metaphysically necessary is reviewed in the light of the problem known as ‘Bradley’s regress’, and is accepted in the case of fundamental laws but not in other cases. The idea that so-called natural or nomic necessity constitutes a genuine kind of necessity is challenged.

The distinction between natural necessity and metaphysical necessity is examined. An account is advanced of the logical form of statements of natural law, contrasting with that of D. M. Armstrong. The relationship between law-statements and counterfactual conditionals is discussed. The claim of scientific essentialists that natural laws are metaphysically necessary is challenged as resting on a questionable account of the identity conditions of properties. It is argued that Saul Kripke’s model of a posteriori knowledge of necessary truths does not enable us to understand how knowledge of natural laws is possible on the scientific essentialist view of them.

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.