Contingent laws rule: reply to Bird
In a recent paper (Bird 2001), Alexander Bird argues that the law that common salt dissolves in water is metaphysically necessary and he does so without presupposing dispositionalism about properties. If his argument were sound, it would thus show that at least one law of nature is metaphysically necessary, and it would do so without illicitly presupposing a position (dispositionalism) that is already committed to a necessitarian view of laws. I shall argue that Bird's argument is unsuccessful. Briefly, and omitting some subtleties that are not relevant to my purposes, Bird's argument runs as follows. A certain law of nature Coulomb's law needs to be true in order for salt to dissolve in water. But Coulomb's law also needs to be true in order for salt to exist at all. This is because