The Broadest Necessity

Bacon, Andrew

doi:10.1007/s10992-017-9447-9

Cited by 37 publications

(46 citation statements)

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“…The question whether metaphysical necessity is the broadest necessity is often asked against the background of a theory of propositions according to which propositions form a Boolean algebra. See, for instance, Bacon (2018) and Williamson (2016). This assumption is implausible in the present context, however.…”

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confidence: 77%

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The Reduction of Necessity to Essence

Ditter

2019

Mind

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In ‘Essence and Modality’, Kit Fine (1994) proposes that for a proposition to be metaphysically necessary is for it to be true in virtue of the nature of all objects. Call this view Fine’s Thesis. This paper is a study of Fine’s Thesis in the context of Fine’s logic of essence (LE). Fine himself has offered his most elaborate defence of the thesis in the context of LE. His defence rests on the widely shared assumption that metaphysical necessity obeys the laws of the modal logic S5. In order to get S5 for metaphysical necessity, he assumes a controversial principle about the nature of all objects. I will show that the addition of this principle to his original system E5 leads to inconsistency with an independently plausible principle about essence. In response, I develop a theory that avoids this inconsistency while allowing us to maintain S5 for metaphysical necessity. However, I conclude that our investigation of Fine’s Thesis in the context of LE motivates the revisionary conclusion that metaphysical necessity obeys the principles of the modal logic S4, but not those of S5. I argue that this constitutes a distinctively essentialist challenge to the received view that the logic of metaphysical necessity is S5.

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confidence: 77%

“…An exact definition of what it means to be the broadest necessity in the context of LE would require discussing a higher-order extension of LE that is beyond the scope of this paper. The definition of 'broadest necessity' suggested in Bacon (2018) would have to be modified in any case. A higher-order theory of essence is developed in Ditter (unpublished).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Reduction of Necessity to Essence

Ditter

2019

Mind

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“…This conception is found in both McFetridge [13] and Hale's [9] classic discussions of absolute necessity. Moreover, in recent work, Bacon [2] has shown how to formalise this conception in a typed quantified modal language with quantification into operator position.…”

Section: Absolute Necessitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A slightly less formal version of Bacon's official characterisation can be stated with the aid of the following notion: 1 ALAB i is as broad as j iff ∀p k ( i p → j p) is true, whenever k is a necessity operator ALAB encodes the popular idea that one notion of necessity is as broad as another just in case, as a matter of necessity (in every sense), the latter deems as necessary 1 Bacon's official working language is a functional type theory in which each type has a corresponding universal quantifier used to generalise universally over things of that type. In Bacon's [2] terms, ALAB can be written as follows:…”

Section: Absolute Necessitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To take an example, it is plausible that physical necessity is as broad as practical necessity since, as a matter of necessity (in every sense), anything which is practically possible is physically possible too. Given ALAB, the claim that absolute necessity ( ) is the broadest necessity can be expressed as follows: 2 Absolute ∀p k ( p → j p) is true, whenever k and j are necessity operators…”

Section: Absolute Necessitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Relative Necessity and Propositional Quantification

Roberts

2019

J Philos Logic

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propose a novel account of relative necessity designed to overcome the problems facing the standard account. Nevertheless, the current article argues that Hale & Leech's account suffers from its own defects, some of which Hale & Leech are aware of but underplay. To supplement this criticism, the article offers an alternative account of relative necessity which overcomes these defects. This alternative account is developed in a quantified modal propositional logic and is shown model-theoretically to meet several desiderata of an account of relative necessity. Keywords Relative necessity • Absolute necessity • Logical necessity • Modal logic There are many different notions of necessity. For example, it may well be practically impossible for someone to run from London to Oxford in under three hours, but surely it is physically possible for that person to do so. Similarly, it is physically necessary that nothing goes faster than the speed of light, but many would claim that it is metaphysically possible for something to do so. Although there are various different kinds of necessity, it is commonly assumed that there is an absolute notion of necessity which is broader than all other notions of necessity. Moreover, given this notion of absolute necessity, it is also widely assumed that all other kinds of necessity can be characterised in terms of it. Indeed, since Smiley's [15] influential proposal, it has become standard practice to characterise notions of relative necessity in terms of certain absolutely strict conditionals. According to

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Metametaphysics and semantics

Williamson¹

2023

Examining Philosophy Itself

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The Broadest Necessity

Cited by 37 publications

References 30 publications

The Reduction of Necessity to Essence

The Reduction of Necessity to Essence

Relative Necessity and Propositional Quantification

Metametaphysics and semantics

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