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Robert Larmer has raised some interesting points in his response (149-159 above), but I think he is missing the main thrust of my argument. Perhaps that is my fault, for not emphasizing it more clearly. As he notes, I do grant that his account of miracles does work just fine - given that one rejects the physicalist causal closure principle (the idea that all systems are ultimately physically isolated.) But my paper is clearly oriented towards saving some sort of physicalist intuitions (and then seeing if, regardless, one can still have miracles in any interesting sense.) If read with that in mind, most of Larmer's criticisms dissolve.
So, given the luxury of a response to Larmer's commentary, I will focus on three main issues in this reply: a little more discussion of the motivation and approach I intended to take in the paper, a brief discussion of the 'repository-transportation' miracle, and then some more specific responses to Larmer's triple-pronged criticisms of each type of miracle.
Law violations and physicalism
My main discomfort with the 'open-systems' and 'exemption' approaches (indeed, with any approach that makes the claim that natural laws are inapplicable because, in essence, the relevant activity isn't natural) is that they commit, unwittingly, to an extremely strong metaphysical claim. What claim is that? That the natural is never sufficient to determine the natural. (The physicalist side is as extreme: the natural is always sufficient to determine the natural.) In the interests of conciseness, I will just say that Larmer's quotation from my e-mail, expressing my doubts about causal disposition theory, encapsulate my complaints quite nicely. The question I was attempting to address was, 'Is it possible to affirm the determinative sufficiency of the natural in substantive respects, while still preserving the possibility of divine intervention?'.
Obviously, my particular closure principle (the CPP) doesn't count as...