Laws of Metaphysics

1. Are there Metaphysical Laws?

The central metaphysical question in the philosophy of explanation asks for the

ontological status of explanations: are there explanation-facts of the form ‘p

explains q’, and if so, are these facts fundamental or are they grounded in something

else? According to some theories, explanation is merely a speech act, expressive of

the attitudes of the speaker. But setting such irrealist views aside, the world does

contain various kinds of causal and non-causal explanation-facts. On the standard

view, causal explanation-facts are not fundamental, but rather explained by

underlying laws of nature: the rock impact explains the window shattering because

of physical laws about rocks and windows.

If causal explanations are supported by general laws, non-causal explanation might

be supported by general laws as well. Consider metaphysical explanations like

‘Peter the elephant is colored because he is grey’ and ‘{Socrates} exists because

Socrates exists’. These explanations might arise from general laws which entail that

any grey object is also colored, and that any object is the member of its singleton

set (Glazier this volume). The role of such laws of metaphysics is to guide the

bottom-up development of facts, much like the role of laws of nature is to govern

facts along the temporal axis.

There is a way to resist this analogy between causal and metaphysical explanation

(Wang this volume). Metaphysically explained facts might be ‘already contained’

in the explaining facts, in which case no law is required to account for metaphysical

explanations. Consider Peter the elephant again, whose greyness grounds, i.e.

metaphysically explains, his being colored. If Peter’s being colored is already

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contained in his being grey, no metaphysical law is required to take the explanans

to the explanandum; the explanation-fact Peter is colored because he is grey is

simply accounted for by the fact that Peter is grey (Bennett 2011, deRosset 2013).

But without laws it will remain mysterious why similar grounds have similar

‘metaphysical effects’, and why dissimilar grounds have dissimilar effects. Why is

every grey object colored because of its being grey? This sort of generality of

metaphysical explanations can perhaps only be accounted for with metaphysical

laws (Wilsch 2015).

Jonathan Schaffer (2018), moreover, argues that metaphysical explanations are

supported by laws because explanation involves unification and manipulation.

Unification requires that p explains q only if p and q belong to a unifying pattern

with the status of a general law; manipulation requires that p explains q only if

counterfactual manipulations on p would yield systematic changes with respect to

q. Since such counterfactual variation requires modally robust laws, both the

unification and the manipulation constraint on metaphysical explanation entail that

there are metaphysical laws.

2. What are Metaphysical Laws?

We have been understanding metaphysical laws are general principles that support

metaphysical explanations. i But what could such principles be? This section asks

whether the notion of a metaphysical laws is sui generis or reducible.

For the sake of concreteness, consider the following singleton law:

SL If x exists, then the singleton set {x} exists

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It is easy to see what the explanatory import of the singleton law is supposed to be:

instances of the antecedent ‘x exists’ explain associated instances of the consequent

‘{x} exists’:

S Socrates exists explains that {Socrates} exists.

An important but subtle point is that SL does not account for explanations like S,

because SL is a universal generalization, a ‘mere regularity’. Since regularities are

grounded in their instances (Fine 2012), SL is partly grounded in if Socrates exists,

then {Socrates} exists, which in turn is partly grounded {Socrates} exists. By the

transitivity of ground, it follows that SL is partly grounded in {Socrates} exists.

Therefore, SL does not in turn help to explain ‘{Socrates} exists’, on pain of

circularity, and so SL does not support the explanation S.

In order to avoid any circularity, we should say that not SL, but the fact that SL is

a law of metaphysics, supports S:

SL* It’s a law of metaphysics that if x exists, then the singleton set {x} exists

If SL* is not grounded in instances of SL, it can explain such instances without

circularity. Since the notion of a metaphysical law features in explanatory principles

such as SL*, we are ideologically committed to whatever piece of ideology we

choose to express that notion. We will next introduce three candidates to constrain

our choice: truth-maker rules, essences, and sui generis metaphysical laws.

Assume that nothing corresponds to disjunctive representations: there are

disjunctive sentences and propositions, but no disjunctive states of affairs. We

should then say that disjunctive representations are ‘made true’ by non-disjunctive

facts. Logical explanations of disjunctions—p or q because p—are supported by

the following truth-maker rule: “p or q” is true if p (/q) holds in reality. We could

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also appeal to truth-maker rules for other areas of discourse. On the extreme end of

the spectrum, even talk about ordinary objects is made true by a reality that contains

only atoms in the void (Williams 2010). Whether or not we accept such an extremist

position, it is plausible that some metaphysical explanations are backed by truth-

maker rules; some metaphysical laws are truth-maker rules.ii

Another plausible candidate for supporting metaphysical explanations is the

essence or nature of things (Zylstra this volume). Boris Kment (2014: ch. 5) refers

to certain essence-claims as laws of metaphysics, and Shamik Dasgupta (2014a,

2014b) offers examples like the following: the presence of the conference is

metaphysically explained by the various activities of the attendees, because it’s

essential to conferences that they obtain if such activities occur.

Perhaps all the metaphysical laws we ever need are truth-maker rules and essence-

truths. But if truthmaking and essence do not suffice to support all metaphysical

explanations, we should introduce a notion of metaphysical law, which is not to be

understood in terms of other notions from the metaphysics toolkit. The question of

whether there are such sui generis laws of metaphysics is currently among the most

pressing questions about metaphysical laws.

If all metaphysical laws were truth-maker rules, reality would be flat as a pancake,

and the world’s layers would be mere artefacts of our representations. Since this

view is at odds with a rather sober form of realism, call it ‘realism about layers’, we

should expect that some metaphysical laws are either essences or sui generis. But

should we side with Dasgupta (2014a), who holds that no sui generis laws are

needed, or with Schaffer (2018), who rejects the need for essence? Or do we need

both pieces of ideology? The following discussion will be framed as competition

between essences and sui generis laws. Sections 3–5 discuss three arguments for

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sui generis laws, and sections 6–8 raise three problems for such laws. The reader

should note that the following sections are meant to inspire further work, rather than

to settle the debate.

3. Pinning Questions and Idle Wheels

This section and the following two introduce reasons to go beyond essences to sui

generis metaphysical laws. The key consideration of this section is that essences

contain more information than needed for supporting metaphysical explanations.

Consider again the explanation that Peter the elephant is colored because he is grey.

We would expect the underlying law to look something like the following (‘ML’ is

short for ‘it’s a metaphysical law that’):

Color ML(if x is grey, then x is colored)

Essence-claims of the form ‘it’s essential to entity x that p’ require not only a

content clause (p), but also a bearer (x). If Color is a veiled essence-truth, we must

therefore supply it with a bearer. To use Jonathan Schaffer’s (2018) expression, we

would need to pin the essence-statement on an entity. Any essence that supports a

metaphysical explanation raises a corresponding pinning-question: is the law

essential to entities from the explanans or from the explanandum?

Some pinning-questions seem problematic because it’s unclear how we could

answer them and because nothing seems to hinge on how we answer them. Consider

metaphysical explanations of psychological or normative facts. If the underlying

laws are essence-truths, they must be pinned either on psychological or on physical

phenomena, on normative or descriptive properties. But these are hard cases. Is it

essential to c-fiber stimulation or to pain that pain cooccurs with stimulated c-

fibers? And is it essential to pleasure or to goodness that pleasure is good? Such

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questions might be answered if, say, pain and goodness could be fully defined. But

in case they cannot, it is unclear, what considerations might even bear on these

choices. Sui generis psychophysical or normative-descriptive metaphysical laws

avoid seemingly unanswerable pinning-questions altogether.

These considerations are more compelling from the point of view of an essence-

skeptic. Schaffer (Ibid.: 312), for instance, argues that the bearer-aspect of essences

is “explanatorily inert” because it has no bearing on metaphysical explanations. As

Schaffer observes, if the only reason for positing essences is to support

metaphysical explanations, we should rather posit sui generis metaphysical laws,

which have less structure than essences, but seem just as fit to do the job.

Proponents of essence, however, will deny that essences earn their keep merely by

accounting for metaphysical explanations. There is, after all, a live practice of

distinguishing accidental from essential properties and of supplying real definitions

for relatively simple entities such as sets or events. These practices might justify

accepting the ideology of essence. Moreover, proponents of essence will point out

that some pinning questions have obvious answers: it is essential to {Socrates}, and

not to Socrates, that Socrates is a member of {Socrates} (Fine 1994), and it is

essential to you, and not to your parents, that you are your parents’ child.

But even proponents of essence may agree that pinning-questions for some

metaphysical laws appear so esoteric and difficult to answer that they better be

avoided. To develop this sort of argument further, one could try to isolate a class of

putative essence-claims, whose associated pinning-questions seem in principle

unanswerable. This class might include essences whose sole purpose is to connect

entities from different layers of reality.

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4. Anselmian Essences and Substantive Ontology

The second motivation for sui generis metaphysical laws is based on Gideon Rosen

(2006) who argues that there aren’t enough essences to ground all metaphysical

necessities. If successful, his argument also shows that essences do not support all

metaphysical explanations, and hence that we require sui generis metaphysical

laws.

Rosen rejects so-called Anselmian essences, which entail the existence of their

bearers. The most famous Anselmian essence-claim is Anselm’s own proposition

that God’s existence is included in her essence. God’s essence thus conceived

would be Anselmian because it entails the existence of its bearer. According to the

Kantian response to Anselm’s ontological argument, existence is not an essential

property because it is not a property. Rosen’s response is different from Kant’s; he

proposes a general ban on existence-entailing essences.

God’s essential existence is an extreme case of Anselmian essence. Less extreme

cases involve essences that entail the existence of their bearers conditionally. To

illustrate, consider standard set theories and mereological theories, which entail that

if certain objects exist (and have certain features), then the associated set or

mereological fusion also exists. If these theories are essential to sets and fusions,

the relevant essences are conditionally existence-entailing and therefore Anselmian.

To illustrate, consider the following Anselmian Essence:

AE It is essential to {Socrates} that if Socrates exists, then {Socrates} exists

AE entails the existence of {Socrates} conditional on the existence of Socrates.

Conditional Anselmian essences such as AE ‘generate’ their bearers from more

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fundamental entities. AE, for instance, generates Socrates’s singleton set from

Socrates.

Rosen’s argument for a general ban on Anselmian essences rests on the following

intuitive claim: we could full-well understand what sets and mereological fusions

are supposed to be and yet deny their existence. IF AE was in fact a correct

characterization of the essence of {Socrates}, then a complete understanding of

what that singleton set is would require accepting that entity on the assumption that

Socrates exists. But it seems unfair to charge nominalists, who reject sets altogether,

with a lack of understanding. From Rosen’s perspective, it should make sense to

say: “I reject your sets and fusions for what they are!” The nominalist might be

wrong, but she is not confused.

If Rosen is right about Anselmian essences, there are no essences to support

metaphysical explanations of derivative objects, as the metaphysical laws

supporting such explanations are conditionally existence-entailing (SL* is a case in

point). Sui generis metaphysical laws are the natural alternative: we can posit laws

to the effect that every object forms a set, without making that principle part of what

sets are. Correspondingly, a failure to know these laws would not reveal a lack of

understanding what sets are. To push back against sui generis laws, therefore,

proponents of Anselmian essence must deny Rosen’s intuitive claim.

The question of Anselmian essences also bears on ontological debates about

derivative entities. Essences may be determined by real definitions, just like

meanings are determined by nominal definitions (Fine 1994). Assume that Rosen’s

ban on Anselmian essences and corresponding real definitions is lifted. Then there

could be definitions that conditionally entail the existence of all sorts of derivative

entities. There could, for instance, be definitions not only of mereological fusion,

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but also of schmusion, which are like fusions, but which are composed only by

things arranged in a circle.

The possibility of the Anselmian real definition of schmusion is problematic

because it may entail that this real definition is ‘in effect’ and, hence, that there is

an existence-entailing essence of schmusion. If we don’t rule out such an essence

with a general ban on Anselmian essences, then what reason could there be for

rejecting it? After all, any phenomenon we can think of, including unicorns, dodos,

or platonic universals, have essence, independent of whether they exist or whether

anyone has laid down a definition. Since real definitions are cheap in this way,

Anselmian essences run the risk of deflating derivative ontology: the threat is that

every derivative entity we can consistently define also exists. Sui generis laws of

metaphysics, in contrast, are robust principles that enable substantive debates about

which derivative entities there are.

5. The Governance of Metaphysical Laws

A third argument in favor of sui generis laws of metaphysics runs as follows. Some

metaphysical explanations are productive in the sense that the explained facts are

“entirely new”. Productive explanations, however, require the support of governing

laws. We need sui generis metaphysical laws because only such laws have the

power to govern.

To unpack this argument, let us first look at the notion of productive explanation.

Familiar causal explanations appear productive. When the rock-impact causes the

window to shatter, the resulting shattering is entirely new to reality and was brought

about with causal ‘oomph’. Productive explanations contrast with systematizing

explanations, which subsume already existing facts and events under general laws.

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For instance, so-called Humeans take causal explanations to be systematizing rather

than productive. On their view, the four-dimensional manifold—“the vast mosaic

of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another” (Lewis

1986: ix)—is metaphysically prior to any causal explanation. Humean explanations

are lines drawn between facts that were already given; Humean laws, therefore,

don’t produce but systematize the facts.

Contrast productive causal explanations also with mathematical explanations. The

arithmetical truth 2 + 3 = 5, for instance, is explained by the Peano axioms, as

2 + 3 = 5 can be derived from the axioms and suitable definitions. But it sounds odd

to say that axioms ‘produce’ arithmetical truths. Axioms rather systematize

arithmetical truths in light of the entire ‘arithmetical manifold’.

Rather, physicalists will say that the physical facts make it the case that the mental

facts are what they are, have the intrinsic natures they do. They will say that it all

unfolds ‘upwards’ from the physical. Rather, physicalists will say that the physical

facts make it the case that the mental facts are what they are, have the intrinsic

natures they do. They will say that it all unfolds ‘upwards’ from the physical.

Are metaphysical explanations productive or systematizing? As Karen Bennett

(2011: 33) points out, broadly reductive views, such as physicalism about the

mental and naturalism about the normative, require that mental and normative facts

are “entirely new” upon their explanations. If metaphysical explanations merely

systematized a mosaic of facts that were already given, they would not be suitable

for sustaining such views. Hence, some metaphysical explanations are productive.iii

How do we account for the productive nature of metaphysical explanations? The

productivity of causation is (assuming that actual causation is productive) due to

the governing operations of the laws of nature. For laws to govern is for them to

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generate output-facts based on input-facts: laws of nature govern the shattering of

the window, just in case they take the rock-impact and generate the shattering on

its basis. Governing laws must therefore be understood fundamentally as input-

output mechanisms (Maudlin 2007: ch.1).

The problem for a purely essence-based understanding of metaphysical laws is that

essences don’t seem to operate in an input-output sort of way. Essences seem to

directly explain the truths in their scope. For instance, your essence explains that

you are the child of your actual parents and the essence of {Socrates} explains that

Socrates is its sole member. As Glazier (2017) explains, ‘it is essential to x that p’

directly explains p. If essences directly explain the truths in their scope, then they

are not input-output operations, and are therefore not apt to govern.

To further illustrate this point, consider the essence-claim ‘It’s essential to color

that everything grey is colored’. How does this essence-claim facilitate the

metaphysical explanation ‘Peter is colored because he is grey’? If essences directly

explain the truths in their scope, then the assumed essence of color directly explains

the general truth ‘Every grey object is colored’. The explanation ‘Peter is colored

because he is grey’ then comes about derivatively by subsuming the pair <Peter is

grey, Peter is colored> under the general truth.

This subsumption-model of essence explanation entails that essence-based

explanations are not productive. This is so because on the subsumption-model, the

regularity ‘Everything grey is colored’ is prior to the explanation of ‘Peter is

colored’. Since ‘Peter is colored’ is also a partial ground of ‘Everything grey is

colored’, ‘Peter is colored’ is a partial ground of its own explanation. If a fact is

prior to its own explanation, that explanation is not productive.

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This reasoning shows that essences don’t govern if they directly explain the

essential truths in their scope. It is quite natural, in contrast, to conceive of laws as

input-output mechanisms, which don’t establish the truths in their scope directly,

but which fundamentally take input-facts to output facts.iv A law of nature which

says that all hit windows shatter, for instance, might, in the first instance, take rock-

impacts to window-shatterings. The explanation of the regularity that all hit

windows shatter is then derivative upon the law’s work on its instances. Since

essences don’t act as input-output mechanisms, but as direct explainers of the truths

in their scope, it is hard to see how essences could govern, and hence how

metaphysical explanations supported by essence could be productive.

6. Purity and Fundamental Laws

We saw over the past three sections that sui generis metaphysical laws may avoid

idle complexity, allow for substantive ontological debates, and account for the

productive aspect of metaphysical explanations. But there are also difficulties and

open questions arising for these laws. The following three sections present three of

the most pressing difficulties.

Schaffer (2018) argues that some laws of metaphysics are fundamental. Assume

that ‘it’s a law of metaphysics that p’ is grounded in q. Then there is a second law

that supports this grounding-explanation. Since it cannot be the same law (‘it’s a

law of metaphysics that p’) on pain of circularity, a new law is required. If this new

law-truth is metaphysically explained, a new law is needed, and so on ad infinitum.

Only fundamental metaphysical laws terminate the regress.

Fundamental metaphysical laws, however, conflict with the claim that nothing

fundamental involves anything derivative. Ted Sider has dubbed a similar claim

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‘the purity principle’ or purity for short (Sider 2011: ch. 7). Since metaphysical laws

connect entities of different ontological levels, they involve derivative objects and

properties. If Schaffer’s regress argument is persuasive, we must therefore give up

either metaphysical laws or the purity principle. But purity is attractive, especially

if one is drawn to a definition of ‘fundamental entity’ as entity, which occurs in a

fundamental fact (deRosset 2013).

Purity does not only conflict with fundamental sui generis metaphysical laws but

also with fundamental essences. Psychophysical laws, for instance, feature

derivative entities, whether they are construed as sui generis metaphysical laws or

as essentialist truths. Shamik Dasgupta (2014a, 2014b), however, argues that

essences are autonomous, in the sense that essences are not apt for metaphysical

explanation. The autonomy of essences is motivated in part by the relationship

between essence and real definition. It makes little sense, Dasgupta argues, to

explain or justify a definition.

The autonomy of essence supposedly removes the tension with purity. For, the

purity constraint understood properly, says Dasgupta, is the claim that all

ungrounded truths which are apt for explanation mention only fundamental

phenomena. Since essences are autonomous, ungrounded essences are not

problematic, even if they involve derivative entities. Essences are therefore

preferable to sui generis laws.

Aside from rejecting purity or exempting metaphysical laws from its jurisdiction

(Schaffer 2017), the proponent of sui generis laws might try to push back against

Dasgupta’s use of autonomy (Glazier 2017, Raven forthcoming), or else claim that

their laws are also autonomous. But there are two other strategies worth presenting,

which don’t invoke the notion of autonomy: first, we might reduce all metaphysical

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laws, pace Schaffer’s regress, and, secondly, we could develop a conception of

fundamental metaphysical laws that don’t mention derivative entities.

Consider first the attempt to reduce sui generis metaphysical laws to regularities in

an antecedently given mosaic: metaphysical laws are regularities that are important

to us in metaphysical theorizing. Regularity theories of laws of metaphysics avoid

the conflict with purity by eschewing fundamental metaphysical laws. Gideon

Rosen was the first to sketch such a regularity theory. On his view, a regularity has

the status of a metaphysical law, if it is “governing how objects in general are put

together.” (Rosen 2006: 35)

Regularity theories face the following three difficulties. First, they must specify a

recipe, perhaps analogous to Lewis (1983)’s best system account of laws of nature,

which details the reduction of laws to regularities. Secondly, just like causal

regularity theories, the regularity theoretic approach renders metaphysical

explanation non-productive (section 5). And thirdly, regularity theorists must

address the regress-worry: if laws are grounded in regularities, don’t they require

further laws, and so on ad infinitum?

These difficulties do not knock regularity theory off the table. There should be some

way to devise the relevant best system, and if Humeans can live without productive

causal explanations, they should be able to live without productive metaphysical

explanations as well. Moreover, we might try to avoid the regress if we deny that

the explanation of metaphysical-law facts requires further sui generis laws. Instead,

these explanations might appeal to the essence of laws or to truth-maker rules: law-

talk might be made-true by facts about the ‘metaphysical mosaic’. As so often, it

looks as though the committed reductionist can build a fortress.

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A less radical response to purity worries offers fundamental laws that don’t involve

derivative phenomena. One implementation of this strategy is the constructional

conception of metaphysical laws. Following Kit Fine’s (1991, 2010) discussion of

constructional ontology, the constructional conception presupposes that every

derivative object, property, or any other kind of derivative entity is constructed from

more basic entities. Some entities, like a mereological sum, a constituted artifact,

or a complex property, are constructed from their constituents; and some entities,

like a smile or a derivative part, are the constructed aspects of more expansive

entities like faces and organic wholes. According to the constructional conception

(Wilsch 2015), metaphysical laws characterize how construction-operations apply

to entities and how the constructed entities ‘go together’ based on their

constructional profiles.

On that conception, metaphysical laws do not name derivative objects and

properties, but only refer to them by means of quantification and fundamental

construction-operations. To illustrate, consider a conjunctive-property law, which

takes facts of the form of Fa and Ga to facts involving the conjunctive property

F&G: Fa, Ga → F&G(a). Does a law of this sort violate purity constraints? It

doesn’t if the property-constructor ‘&’ is considered a fundamental ingredient of

reality. We can construe metaphysical laws in a purity-friendly way, if they only

concern objects and properties that are constructed via fundamental constructors

from the fundamental ontology (Wilsch 2016).

7. Metaphysical Laws and the Intimacy of Ground

A second difficulty for sui generis laws of metaphysics arises from the dictum that

metaphysical explanations are the “tightest” of all explanations (Fine 2001: 15). In

this vein, it is sometimes said that the metaphysically explained fact is ‘nothing over

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and above’ the explaining facts, or that metaphysical explanations are reductive.

The challenge for proponents of sui generis laws is to explain how metaphysical

laws manage to establish explanations of this intimate sort.

To further clarify this challenge, a comparison to laws of nature and to emergence

laws might be helpful. Laws of nature establish causal explanations, and emergence

laws establish non-causal explanations, which are however supposed to leave the

explained facts unreduced and independent from the facts in the emergence-base.

We can debate over whether there is room for the notion of an emergence-law, as

the phenomenon of emergence is not well understood (see however Leuenberger,

this volume.) But the challenge remains: what separates laws of metaphysics from

other laws, which establish explanations less tight than metaphysical explanations?v

We could answer this question with brute force by stipulating that this is just what

a law of metaphysics is: metaphysical laws are those laws that establish maximally

intimate explanations. The problem with this primitivist answer, apart from leaving

intimacy unexplained, is that it makes reductive enterprises look too easy. If you

wish to ground the normative in the descriptive or the mental in the physical, simply

postulate metaphysical laws connecting various input-states to associated output-

states and be done. The intimacy-inducing nature of the postulated laws determines

that the mental (or normative) is nothing over and above the physical (or natural).

Doesn’t that make vindicating physicalism and normative naturalism too easy? vi

To avoid this consequence, we can constrain the contents of metaphysical laws: not

every function from input- to output-states may qualify as metaphysical law. We

can impose constraints on the contents of laws that make it harder to postulate them,

and that also explain their connection to the tightness of metaphysical explanations.

One kind of constraint that may play the desired role comes from the constructional

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conception (section 6). On that conception, metaphysical laws take physical states

to mental states, for instance, by specifying how the resultant state is constructed.

Of the following examples, only LAW 2 is an acceptable metaphysical law on the

constructional conception, as LAW 1 does not mention construction-operations:

LAW 1 When S’s c-fibers fire, then S is in pain

LAW 2 When S’s c-fibers fire, then S has property F, where F is

constructed via operation O from c-fiber stimulation.

The first law is easy to postulate and does not render intelligible why resulting

explanations of pain are reductive. The second law is harder to postulate, as it

requires us to make sense of a construction-operation that generates psychological

from physiological properties or states. As we will see next, LAW 2 also explains

why metaphysical explanations of pain are especially tight.

The constructional conception is naturally combined with the claim that talk of

‘nothing over and above’ does not really apply to truths, but rather to entities: the

composite entity is nothing over and above its parts, the statue is nothing over and

above its constituting matter, and the smile is nothing over and above the smiling

face. Generalizing from these cases, x is nothing over and above the ys, just in case

x is constructed from the ys. Since being nothing over and above is an ontological

relationship and not one between truths, we should say that two truths, p and q, bear

an intimate relationship to one another only insofar as some of the entities featuring

in p are nothing over and above the entities in q.vii

On this view, there is nothing about the laws of metaphysics per se which renders

metaphysical explanations especially tight. Rather, the constructional relationships

between the entities featuring in metaphysical explanations is what makes these

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kinds of explanation intimate. No explanation of mental truths in terms of physical

ones makes for a reduction; what is needed for physicalism, for instance, are

reductive ontological relationships between mental and physical entities like mental

and physical states or properties.

To sum up, the reductive nature of metaphysical laws could either come from the

notion of a metaphysical law or from constraints on their content. On the first

option, it is surprisingly easy to realize a reductive agenda. On the second option,

the content of the laws explains both why metaphysical laws don’t come for free,

and why metaphysical explanations are especially intimate. The constructional

conception of the laws is one possible implementation of the second option.

8. Are Metaphysical laws Metaphysically Necessary?

Metaphysical laws carry necessity in a variety of ways. If p is a metaphysical law,

then p is necessary, and so is the fact that p is a metaphysical law. Moreover, if a

metaphysical law establishes a metaphysical explanation ‘q because p’, then the

conditional ‘if p then q’ is also necessary (although see Skiles 2015 and Skiles this

volume for critical discussions). But how do metaphysical laws give rise to

necessity and what kind of necessity do such laws give rise to? We will see that

these questions spell trouble for sui generis metaphysical laws.

On the received view, there is one absolute kind of necessity or necessity tout court,

which is often referred to as “logical” or “metaphysical necessity”, and there are

several relative kinds of necessity, which are defined from the absolute one. The

most common example of a relative kind of necessity is nomological necessity,

which applies to a proposition, p, just in case it is necessary in the absolute sense

that if the actual laws of nature hold, then p. Since necessity and possibility are

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duals, the notion of a relative kind of necessity can also be understood as a

restriction on a space of possibility. The space of nomological possibilities, for

instance, is gained by restricting the space of metaphysical possibilities to those

worlds at which the actual laws of nature hold (see Fine 2002 for disagreement).

The problem for sui generis laws of metaphysics is now as follows. On the one

hand, metaphysical laws seem necessary tout court. For instance, it just seems

absolutely impossible that Peter is grey and yet not colored, or that Socrates exists

without his singleton. But the case of laws of nature suggests, on the other hand,

that the necessity of laws is a relative kind. Since sui generis laws of metaphysics

are laws, they thus don’t seem to secure absolute necessity.

If metaphysical laws are essences, this difficulty is easily avoided, because essences

are associated with absolute necessity. But there are also two responses available to

proponents of sui generis metaphysical laws. The first one denies that the necessity

of metaphysical laws is absolute, and the second response denies that laws only

give rise to relative kinds of necessity. As we will see, both responses raise difficult

questions.

The first response insists that the necessity of metaphysical laws is a relative sort of

necessity. Gideon Rosen (2006), for instance, suggests that there is an order of

strength running from the necessity of essence to metaphysical necessity to the

necessity of laws of nature. On his view, the necessity of essence is absolute, but

the other two kinds of necessity are relative because metaphysical and natural

possibility are defined as restrictions of essence-possibility: p is metaphysically

possible iffdef p is consistent with essences and metaphysical laws, and p is naturally

possible iffdef p is consistent with essences as well as metaphysical and natural laws.

Putting these definitions together, we get a nested spheres picture of possibility:

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On Rosen’s view, metaphysical and natural necessity are relative. But as Rosen

points out, relative kinds of necessity run the risk of deflation. For, we can use

essence-necessity together with any arbitrary set of truths to define a relative kind

of necessity. We could define, for instance, that a truth p has Peter-necessity just in

case p is essence-necessitated by truths about Peter. The definition of Peter-

necessity is completely analogous to the definition of metaphysical necessity as

whatever is essence-necessitated by the metaphysical laws. This analogy is

problematic for Rosen’s account. If the only relevant difference between

metaphysical necessity and Peter-Necessity consists in the utility of those notions

to us, the difference between them may not be sufficiently objective. (Rosen 2006

and Leech 2016 disagree. See also Fine 2002 and Wilsch 2017.)

If these difficulties stick, no genuine kind of necessity should be understood as a

relative kind. It follows that the necessity of metaphysical laws is absolute, and so

is the necessity of essence and the necessity of laws of nature. The view that

essences, metaphysical laws and laws of nature exert absolute necessity is

surprisingly underdeveloped. To show that it is a workable view, one would need

to address the following questions. First, is there one or are there multiple absolute

kinds of necessity? Secondly, what determines whether two sources exert the same

or different kinds of necessity? And what does it take for one absolute kind of

necessity to be stronger than another absolute kind of necessity? If these questions

can be addressed, proponents of sui generis laws must explain whether the necessity

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of metaphysical laws is distinctive, or whether it is the same as the necessity of

essence or the necessity of natural laws.viii

i
See Wilsch (2016) for an account on how metaphysical laws support explanations.
ii
Ted Sider (2012: ch.7) develops an important framework for truth-maker rules; not to be conflated with
truth-maker theory.
iii
Bennett (2011) accounts for the productive-ness of metaphysical explanations with her view,
discussed in section 1, that the grounded fact is contained in the ground.
iv
Glazier (2015)’s account of metaphysical laws as a variable-binding connective seems particularly
well-suited for a construal of metaphysical laws as input-output mechanisms.
v
There is a tension between the intimacy of metaphysical explanations and the claim from section 5 that
some metaphysically explained entities are ‘entirely new’. Although this tension may perhaps be resolved,
one could use it to argue against the productivity or the intimacy of metaphysical explanation.
vi
‘Grounding physicalism’ as developed in Schaffer 2017 is a potential target of this argument.
vii
An interesting exception to this ontological construal of ‘nothing over and above’ occurs with
applications of truth-maker rules.
viii
Many thanks to Nina Emery, Stephanie Leary, Mike Raven, Jonathan Schaffer, and Erica Shumener for
feedback on earlier drafts.

Related Topics

A more detailed discussion of essence can be found in Justin Zylstra’s contribution

in this volume.

For a more thorough discussion of Humean reductions of laws, the reader should

look at Nina Emery’s contribution on the laws of nature.

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Biographical details: Tobias Wilsch is a junior faculty member in the Department

of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen, Germany.

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