Necessities Overboard: A Reply to Lange

A classic objection to Humeanism about scientific laws is that Humeans cannot make sense of the counterfactual invariance of the laws.For example, if there were 'nothing in the entire history of the universe except a single electron' (Lange, 2009, p. 55) then, intuitively, the laws would still be the same.But classic Humean views don't seem to get such results.Some influential modern Humean views, particularly Dorst (2020), Loew &Jaag (2019), andBhogal (2020), have argued that the Humean can, in fact, make sense of counterfactual invariance.Against this, Marc Lange (2022) has recently argued that modern Humean approaches are unsatisfactory.His conclusion that 'this is the kind of evidence on which research programmes…should be judged' (p.27) suggests that he takes this to be (close to) a fatal problem for Humeanism.In this discussion note I defend the Humean -in particular, the view of Bhogal (2020) -against Lange.The key idea is that the Humean should think of their reduction of the laws to the Humean mosaic as closely related to other views where we reduce one domain to another but still allow that the higher-level domain can be 'autonomous' of the lower-level in some respects -like, for example, the view that the special sciences reduce to physics but can still can work autonomously of physics.The 'great divide' in the metaphysics of science is between Humean and anti-Humean approaches to scientific modalities -most notably, scientific laws.Humeans take scientific laws to be reducible to the Humean mosaic of non-modal facts.Anti-Humeans disagree, holding a variety of positions where laws have more metaphysical heft.The debate is long and substantial, but it has been changing rapidly in recent years.Modern Humeans have developed novel responses to problems that have plagued Humeanism for years.In particular, consider the classic objection that Humeans cannot make sense of the counterfactual invariance of the laws.The Humean seems to misevaluate claims about what laws