Necessary Laws and the Problem of Counterlegals

Substantive counterlegal discourse poses a problem for those according to whom the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. I discern two types of necessitarianism about laws: Dispositional Essentialism and Modal Necessitarianism. I argue that Handfield (2004)’s response to the problem of counterlegals cannot help the Modal Necessitarian, according to whom all possible worlds are identical with respect to the laws. I thus propose a fictionalist treatment of counterlegals. Fictions are not limited by metaphysical possibility, hence, fictionalism affords the Modal Necessitarian the means to account for the apparent substance of counterlegals even granting the metaphysical necessity of the laws