The Debate over the Consequence Argument 95if determinism is true. And it may ramify in such a way that the very state of the
world at some distant past time together with the same laws of nature would
entail that S does not do 20 push- ups before t. For instance, if S can do four
push- ups after t, but this would require will- power that S almost never has, a
world in which S does 18 push- ups before t might be the one most similar to the
actual world.
Ginet also takes on the Local Miracle Compatibilists’ objection to the Con-
sequence Argument.^23 The advocate of LMC denies that if p is deducible from
the laws of nature, then it is never open to anyone to make it the case that not- p;
that is, LMC rejects the Principle of the Fixity of the Laws. Now van Inwagen’s
case for the inescapability of the laws features examples such as: If it is a law of
nature that protons cannot travel faster than the speed of light, then it is open for
no one to make protons travel faster than the speed of light (say, by building
some sort of machine). As we’ve seen, David Lewis argues that such examples
do not support the principle of the inescapability of the laws. As Ginet formu-
lates it, Lewis argues that van Inwagen- type inferences can be supported by a
narrower principle:
(Y) If p is a law of nature, it is never open to anyone to perform an action
that would be or would cause an event that falsifies p.Alternatively expressed, Lewis denies the following:
(W) It is never open to anyone to perform an action which is such that, had
she performed it, a law of nature would not have been a law of nature, or
would have had an exception (that is, a law would have been falsified).The idea, again (as explained Section 3.2), is that S might have acted so that a
law of nature would have been falsified without that act being or causing a law-
breaking event.
In response, Ginet argues that there are impeccable inferences in which (Y)
cannot do the work it would need to do, given Lewis’s view. Here is the example
Ginet uses to argue this point. Imagine that some time before t, S ingested a drug
that quickly causes a period of complete unconsciousness that lasts for several
hours. Suppose that, because of the drug, there is true of S a certain proposition
of the form:
At t, S’s neural system was in state U.And suppose it follows from this proposition and the laws of nature that S was
unconscious for at least 30 seconds after t. Ginet contends that we are surely
entitled to deduce that it was not open to S to voluntarily exert force with her
arm in the five seconds after t. But (Y) does not license this inference. For S’s
voluntarily exerting force with her arm in that five seconds, if it had happened,
would not itself have been or caused an event that contradicts the laws of nature.