Miracles and the Laws of Nature

Faith and Philosophy 2 (4):333-346 (1985)
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Abstract

Construing miracles as “violations,” I argue that a law of nature must specify some kind of possibility. But we must have here a sense of possibility for which the ancient rule of logic---ab esse ad posse valet consequentia---does not hold. We already have one example associated with the concept of statute law, a law which specifies what is legally possible but which is not destroyed by a violation. If laws of nature are construed as specifying some analogous sense of what is naturally possible, then they need not be invalidated by a (rare) violation, and Humean miracles remain a genuine possibility.

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Citations of this work

Miracles.Michael Levine - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Ab Esse ad Posse Non Valet Consequentia.Daniel Dohrn - 2024 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 53 (2):391-409.
Miracles and violations: Timothy Pritchard.Timothy Pritchard - 2011 - Religious Studies 47 (1):41-58.

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References found in this work

The Miraculous.R. F. Holland - 1965 - American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1):43-51.
"Miracle" and "Paradox".Alastair McKinnon - 1967 - American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (4):308-314.

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