Contingentism about Individuals and Higher - Order Necessitism
نویسندگان
چکیده
Necessitism about individuals claims that necessarily every individual necessarily exists. An analogous necessitist thesis attributes necessary existence to properties and relations. Both theses have been defended by Williamson. Furthermore, Williamson specifically argues against the hybrid conjunction of first-order contingentism (the negation of necessitism about individuals) and higher-order necessitism; a combination that would bring about additional drawbacks. I work out a defence of the hybrid combination, including some replies to Williamson’s additional objections. Considerations of ontological parsimony and pretheoretical intuitions favour the hybrid view over necessitism at all orders (which Williamson mainly defends by invoking considerations of simplicity).
منابع مشابه
Necessitism, Contingentism and Plural Quantification
Necessitism is the view that necessarily everything is necessarily something; contingentism is the negation of necessitism. The dispute between them is reminiscent of, but clearer than, the more familiar one between possibilism and actualism. A mapping often used to ‘translate’ actualist discourse into possibilist discourse is adapted to map every sentence of a first-order modal language to a s...
متن کاملModal Ontology and Generalized Quantifiers
Timothy Williamson has argued that in the debate on modal ontology, the familiar distinction between actualism and possibilism should be replaced by a distinction between positions he calls contingentism and necessitism. He has also argued in favor of necessitism, using results on quantified modal logic with plurally interpreted second-order quantifiers showing that necessitists can draw distin...
متن کاملexistence, definedness, and the semantics of possibility andnecessity
In this paper, I will address just some of ProfessorWilliamson’s treatment of necessitism in hisModal Logic as Metaphysics [28]. I will give an account of what space might remain for a principled and logically disciplined contingentism. I agree withWilliamson that those interested in the metaphysics of modality would do well to take quantified modal logic—and its semantics—seriously in order to...
متن کاملThe Methodology of Modal Logic as Metaphysics
Timothy Williamson’s Modal Logic as Metaphysics is, among much else, a detailed and complex defense of the metaphysical view he calls necessitism, the view that necessarily everything necessarily exists (is something), that although it may be a contingent matter how things are, what things there are is entirely a matter of necessity. The majority of contemporary modal metaphysicians reject this...
متن کاملبررسی باورها در مورد ظاهر و احساس کهتری در افراد داوطلب جراحی زیبایی
Background and Aim: Cosmetic surgery is performed for improvement of psycho-social function in absence physical cues. This multidimensional concept depends on many factors such as beliefs about appearance and inferiority feeling. The purpose of this study was to compare two factors of beliefs about appearance and inferiority feeling in volunteer and non-volunteer individuals for cosmetic surge...
متن کامل