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Full Idea
If a counterfactual holds in a possible world, that is presumably because a law holds in that world, which means there could be basic causal laws that lack all instances. But then causal laws cannot be totally supervenient on the history of the universe.
Gist of Idea
In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality
Source
Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 4.1.2)
Book Ref
'The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics', ed/tr. Loux,M /Zimmerman,D [OUP 2005], p.395
A Reaction
A nice argument, which sounds like trouble for Lewis. One could deny that the laws have to hold in the counterfactual worlds, but then we wouldn't be able to conceive them.
8388 | Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism [Tooley] |
8389 | Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable [Tooley] |
8390 | Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action [Tooley] |
8391 | In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality [Tooley] |
8392 | Probabilist laws are compatible with effects always or never happening [Tooley] |
8393 | We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter [Tooley] |
8394 | Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation [Tooley] |
8398 | Causation is a concept of a relation the same in all worlds, so it can't be a physical process [Tooley] |
8399 | The actual cause may not be the most efficacious one [Tooley] |
8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |