Maverick Philosopher

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 impossible?  Plantinga doesn't cite Earman, but I will: 

John Earman, Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford 2000), p. 8, writes:

 . . . 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 is an exceptionless regularity.

According to one way of thinking, miracles are violations of laws of nature. And so one may argue:

1. A miracle is an exception to a law of nature.
2. Every law of nature is an exceptionless regularity (though not conversely).
Therefore
3. A miracle is an exception to an exceptionless regularity.
Therefore
4. Miracles are logically impossible.

 Please note that (2) merely states that whatever a law of nature is, it is an exceptionless regularity. Thus (2) does not commit one to a regularity theory of laws according to which laws are identified with exceptionless regularities. The idea is that any theory of (deterministic) laws would include the idea that a law is an exceptionless regularity.

The above argument seems to show that if miracles are to be logically possible they cannot be understood as violations of laws of nature. To avoid the conclusion one must deny (1). How then are miracles to be understood?  Plantinga supplies an answer:

Miracles are often thought to be problematic, in that God, if he were to perform a miracle, would be involved in 'breaking,' going contrary to, abrogating, suspending, a natural law.  But given this conception of law, if God were to perform a miracle, it wouldn't at all involve contravening a natural law.  That is because, obviously, any occasion on which God performs a miracle is an occasion when the universe is not causally closed; and the laws say nothing about what happens when the universe is not causally closed.  Indeed, on this conception it isn't even possible that God break a law of nature. (pp. 82-83)

As I understand him, Plantinga is saying that a miracle is not a divine suspension of a law of nature, but a  divine suspension of causal closure.   Conservation and other natural laws apply to isolated or closed systems (78).  God cannot intervene without 'violating' closure; but that does not amount to a violation of a law since the laws hold only for closed systems.  "It is entirely possible for God to create a full-grown horse in the middle of Times Square without violating the principle of conservation of energy.  That is because the systems including the horse would not be closed or isolated." (79)

Plantinga is maintaining that it is logically impossible, impossible in the very strongest sense of the term, for anyone, including God, to contravene a law of nature.  But it is logically possible that God contravene causal closure.  This implies that causal closure is not a law of nature.

But isn't it a proposition of physics that the physical universe is causally closed, that every cause of a physical event is a physical event and that every effect of a physical event is a physical event?  No, says Plantinga.  Causal closure is a "metaphysical add-on," (79) not part of physics.  That's right, as far as I can see.  I would add that it is the mistake of scientism to think otherwise.

Whether or or not God ever intervenes in the physical world, I do it all the time.  It's called mental causation.  That it occurs is a plain fact; that mental causes are not identical to physical causes is not a plain fact, but very persuasively arguable, pace Jaegwon Kim.   So if a frail reed such as the Maverick Philosopher can bring about the suspension of causal closure, then God should be able to pull it off as well.  (This comparison with mental causation is mine, not Plantinga's.)

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 if I want nice cold water for a short time, I turn on the 'hot' tap.)

What appears to be an exception to an exceptionless regularity is not one at all, for the apparent exception is itself regular. The statement, "Hot from 'hot,' cold from 'cold'," has a counterexample. But it does not follow that the underlying regularity has an exception. For if the underlying regularity were to be captured in a complete statement, that statement would be seen to have no counterexamples since all the exceptions would have been built into it.

This is just a little 'warm-up' for a further series of posts on miracles.  And I just noticed that Frege (whom to have on one's side in a logic fight is like having Doc Holliday on one's side in a gunfight) seems to be on my side:

The word 'law' is used in two senses. When we speak of laws of morals or the state we mean regulations which must be obeyed but with which actual happenings are not always in conformity. Laws of nature are the generalization of natural occurrences with which the occurrences are always in accordance. (First paragraph of "The Thought: A Logical Inquiry")

A law may be more than an exceptionless regularity, but it is at least one.

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 of them admit of exceptions. But it is hard to credit the idea that the laws themselves could admit of exceptions.

This assertion that (deterministic) laws cannot have exceptions drew heavy fire. 'Ockham' commenting at my old blog, wrote:

If a law couldn't be broken, why do we ever use the word 'broken' in the same vicinity as 'law'? Indeed, at this point I could use a 'contrast argument' which I know Bill hates. It only makes sense to talk about laws not being broken, if laws can be broken. Ergo, laws can be broken.

We do speak of breaking laws and of laws being broken. But this is almost always in the context of civil (legal) laws and moral laws. The latter are prescriptive and proscriptive: You shall do X and you shall refrain from doing Y. Laws of these forms are often broken.  But when they are broken, this has no tendency to show that they are not valid or binding. Legally and morally, one must feed one's children; but it would be absurd to argue that since some parents do not feed their children that these laws do not hold.

But in the case of laws of nature, violations do show that they are not valid. A law of nature that could be violated would not be a law of naure. A legal or moral law that could not be violated, by contrast, would not be a legal or moral law. The latter are 'laws of freedom,' laws that legislate with respect to free beings. A necessary feature of them is that they allow the possibility of their own violation. By contrast, a necessary feature of laws of nature is that they be exceptionless.

The necessity that attaches to moral and legal laws is moral necessity or obligatoriness. Now the following is a consistent set: {It is obligatory that All Fs are Gs; Some Fs are not Gs). By contrast, the necessity that attaches to laws of nature is nomic necessity. The following is an inconsistent set: {It is nomically necessary that All Fs are Gs; Some Fs are not Gs.)

If we bear clearly in mind the distinction between laws of nature on the one hand, and legal/moral laws on the other, then we will not speak of the breaking of laws of nature.

With respect to Ockham's contrast argument, I concede that it is bound up with the very sense of 'legal/moral law' that it be possible for such laws to be broken. But a law of nature is not a law in this sense. Events in nature can neither abide by laws of nature nor break them. That one and the same word 'law' is used both for legal/moral imperatives and also for nature-descriptive declaratives is an interesting fact, but it looks to be a case of pure equivocation.

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 of size GMm/r^2 on another system of mass m a distance r away) or Coulomb’s law (A system with charge q1 exerts a force of size ε0q1q2/r^2 on another system of charge q2 a distance r away). These are not strict regularities. Any system that is both massive and charged presents a counterexample. Special forces behave in this respect just like powers. This is reflected in the language we use to present these laws: one mass attracts another; two negative charges repel each other. Attraction and repulsion are not among what Ryle called ‘success’ verbs. Their truth conditions do not demand success: X can truly attract Y despite the fact that Y is not moved towards X. But perhaps, as with the delights of our universe or the Ratman’s desire for the death of his father, the requisite effects are really there after all. Earman, Roberts, and Smith feel that the arguments against this position are not compelling. I think they are: the force of size GMm/r^2 does not appear to be there; it is not what standard measurements generally reveal; and the effects we are entitled to expect –- principally an acceleration in a system of mass m a distance r away of size GM/r^2 – are not there either.

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 operating laws of whose causes are, and must remain, absolutely unknown to us." (Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Harper Torchbooks, p. 81) There is no talk here, as in Hume, of a miracle as involving a "transgression" of a law of nature. The idea is that in the case of miraculous events there are laws of nature operating but these laws are unknown to us. This seems to imply that the miraculousness of a miracle is an appearance relative to our ignorance. If we knew the laws, there would be no miracles.

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 will of God and the existence of miracles ontically construed. Miracles so construed violate, contravene, suspend, or otherwise upset the laws of nature. But the laws of nature are ordained by God, and that would seem to be the case however laws are understood, whether as regularities or as relations of universals or whatever. So it seems as if the theist is under a certain amount of conceptual pressure to adopt an epistemic theory of miracles. We heard Augustine say, Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura: A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature. We find a similar view in Spinoza, despite the very considerable differences between the two thinkers:

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 a miracle a violation of a law of Nature by a god, that is, a very powerful rational being who is not a material object (viz., is invisible and intangible). My definition of a miracle is thus approximately the same as Hume's: "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity or by the interposition of some invisible agent." (446)

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, the regularities, and thus the laws, exist independently of our theorizing. Surely, if there are physical laws at all, and whatever their exact nature, their existence antedates ours. Laws of science, on the other hand, are our attempts at formulating and expressing the laws of nature. They are human creations. Since physics is a human activity, there were no laws of physics before human beings came on the scene; but there were physical laws before we came on the scene. Physics is not the same as nature; physics is the study of nature, our study of nature. It is obvious that physics cannot exist without nature, for it would then have no object, but nature can get on quite well without physics.

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 to have science of it. (But we do have science, knowledge, of nature, ergo, etc.) For example, it is a global uniformity of nature that any two electrons anywhere in the universe will repel each other, that no signal, anywhere, can travel faster than the speed of light, etc. Here is the form of a global uniformity, an exceptionless regularity:

1. Wherever and whenever F-ness is instantiated, G-ness is instantiated.

Now for various reasons which we may consider later, a law of nature cannot be identified with an exceptionless regularity. (For one thing, law statements support counterfactuals while statements of global uniformity do not support counterfactuals.) But laws manifest themselves in global uniformities. (This talk of 'manifestation,' which I find felicitous, I borrow from D. M. Armstrong.)

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 is an exceptionless regularity.

According to a standard way of thinking, miracles are violations of laws of nature. This approach has an impressive pedigree. Thus Thomas Aquinas writes, in the Summa Theologica (Q. 110, art. 4, respondeo), "A miracle properly so called takes place when something is done outside the order of nature." Thomas makes it clear that by 'nature' he means the whole of created nature, and not just physical nature. He concludes that God alone can work miracles.

Thomas also alludes (in Reply Obj. 2) to a distinction between miracles ontically and epistemically construed. This is not his terminology. He speaks of miracles "absolutely" considered and miracles "in reference to ourselves." Something that occurs by a power unknown to us may appear miraculous to us and yet not be miraculous absolutely.  We could call that an epistemic miracle: an event  which does not contravene a law of nature, but appears to do so due to our ignorance.  Genuine miracles, events that in fact do contravene laws of nature, we could call ontic miracles.  But don't be misled by the terminology: the suggestion is not that there are two kinds of miracles, epistemic and ontic, but two senses of 'miracle.'  'Epistemic' in 'epistemic miracle' is an alienans adjective.

Now consider:

1. A miracle is an exception to a law of nature.
2. Every law of nature is an exceptionless regularity (though not conversely).
Therefore
3. A miracle is an exception to an exceptionless regularity.
Therefore
4. Miracles are logically impossible.

This argument seems to show that if miracles are to be logically possible they cannot be understood as violations of laws of nature. How then are they to be understood?  Please note that (2) merely states that whatever a law of nature is, it is an exceptionless regularity.  Thus (2) does not commit one to a regularity theory of laws according to which laws are identified with exceptionless regularities.  The idea is that any theory of  (deterministic) laws would include the idea that a law is an exceptionless regularity.