Category: Laws of Nature
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Explanation and Understanding: More on Bogardus
What follows are some further ruminations occasioned by the article by Tomas Bogardus first referenced and commented upon here. I will begin by explaining the distinction between personal and impersonal explanations. The explanation I am about to give is itself a personal explanation, as should become clear after I define 'personal explanation.' A lightning bolt…
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Naturalism, Ultimate Explanation, and Brute Facts and Laws
Malcolm Pollack solicited my comments on an article by Tomas Bogardus that appeared in Religious Studies under the title, If naturalism is true, then scientific explanationis impossible. Malcolm summarizes: I’ve just read a brief and remarkably persuasive philosophical paper by Tomas Bogardus, a professor of philosophy at Pepperdine University. In it, he argues that, if…
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Can God Break a Law of Nature?
This is the fourth in a series of posts on Plantinga's new book. They are collected under the rubric Science and Religion. In the third chapter of Where the Conflict Really Lies, Plantinga addresses questions about divine action and divine intervention in the workings of nature. A miracle is such an intervention. But aren't miracles logically…
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Of Summertime in the Desert and Miracles
When cold water comes out of the 'hot' tap, and hot water out of the 'cold,' is it a miracle? No, it is summertime in the desert. (The pipe from the water heater runs through the air-conditioned house; the cold water line comes from outside where the temperature is in the triple Fahrenheit digits. So…
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Laws of Nature, Civil Laws, and the Idea of ‘Breaking’ a Law
In Kant on Miracles, I wrote: The advantage of the epistemic approach [to miracles] is that it rescues us from the rank absurdity, pointed out by Hume, of having to say that there are laws of nature that admit of exceptions. Since our understanding is imperfect, our formulations of the laws of nature will some…
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Ceteris Paribus Laws and Miracles
Here is a passage from a paper by Nancy Cartwright, In Favor of Laws that are not Ceteris Paribus After All, for you to break your eager heads against: Turn now to what Earman, Roberts, and Smith call “special force laws”, like the law of universal gravitation (A system of mass M exerts a force…
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Kant on Miracles
Earlier posts uncovered epistemic as opposed to ontic conceptions of miracles in Augustine and in Spinoza; but Immanuel Kant too seems to favor an epistemic approach. "If one asks: What is to be understood by the word miracle? it may be explained . . . by saying that they are events in the world the…
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Spinoza’s Epistemic Theory of Miracles
Chapter Six of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise is entitled, "Of Miracles." We do well to see what we can learn from it. Spinoza makes four main points in this chapter, but I will examine only two of them in this entry. We learned from yesterday's discussion of Augustine that there is a certain tension between the…
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Swinburne on Miracles: Quotes and Notes
Herewith, a bit of commentary on R. G. Swinburne's "Miracles" (Phil. Quart. vol. 18, no. 73, October 1968. Reprinted in Rowe and Wainwright, pp. 446-453) To be fair, I should consider what Swinburne says in his later publications on this topic; perhaps in subsequent posts. 1. What is a miracle? Swinburne writes, I understand by…
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Three Senses of ‘Law’ Distinguished
1. There is a distinction between a law of nature and a law of science. If there are laws of nature, they have nothing to do with us or our theorizing. They are 'out there in the world.' For example, if we adopt a regularity theory of laws, and I am not saying we should,…
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Are Miracles Logically Possible? Part II
The problem raised in the first post in this series is whether we can make logical room for miracles, specifically, divine interventions in, or interferences with, the natural course of events. Now nature is orderly and regular: it displays local and global ('cosmic') uniformities. If that were not the case, it would not be possible…
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Are Miracles Logically Possible?
John Earman, Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford 2000), p. 8: . . . if a miracle is a violation of a law of nature, then whether or not the violation is due to the intervention of the Deity, a miracle is logically impossible since, whatever else a law of nature is, it…