Abstract
Thus, natural lawhood, natural necessity, and counterfactual conditionals are closely interrelated. This chapter aims to sketch briefly an account of their relations. Of course, laws would not still have remained true under counterfactual suppositions with which they are logically inconsistent. Facts about necessity, natural law, explanation, and counterfactuals are closely interrelated. Philosophy aims not only to identify these interrelations, but also to account for them. For instance, philosophy aims not only to identify the precise relation to counterfactuals that sets laws apart from accidents, but also to explain why laws (but not accidents) stand in that relation. Natural necessity is not possessed by contingent facts that are not laws (that is, by “accidents”), such as the fact (presuming it to be a fact) that all gold cubes in the entire history of the universe are smaller than one cubic meter. There could have been a gold cube exceeding two cubic meters, but in fact, none ever exists.
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