A possible world semantics for standard modal languages is presented, where the valuation functions are allowed to be partial, the truth--functional connectives are interpreted according to weak Kleene matrices, and the necessity operator is given a "weak" interpretation. Completeness and incompleteness results for some (axiomatic) systems are then established. Extensions of these modal logics in which figure "statability" operators are also examined.

A possible world semantics for standard modal languages is presented, where the valuation functions are allowed to be partial, the truth–functional connectives are interpreted according to weak Kleene matrices, and the necessity operator is given a “weak” interpretation. Completeness and incompleteness results for some (axiomatic) systems are then established. Extensions of these modal logics in which figure “statability” operators are also examined.

A prevailing thought is that generics have a covert modal operator at logical form. I claim that if this is right, the covert generic modality is a weak necessity modal. In this paper, I pr...

Kolodny and MacFarlane have made a pioneering contribution to our understanding of how the interpretation of deontic modals can be sensitive to evidence and information. But integrating the discussion of information-sensitivity into the standard Kratzerian framework for modals suggests ways of capturing the relevant data without treating deontic modals as “informational modals” in their sense. I show that though one such way of capturing the data within the standard semantics fails, an alternative does not. Nevertheless I argue that we have (...) good reasons to adopt an information-sensitive semantics of the general type Kolodny and MacFarlane describe. Contrary to the standard semantics, relative deontic value between possibilities sometimes depends on which possibilities are live. I develop an ordering semantics for deontic modals that captures this point and addresses various complications introduced by integrating the discussion of information-sensitivity into the standard semantic framework. By attending to these complexities, we can also illuminate various roles that information and evidence play in logical arguments, discourse, and deliberation. (shrink)

Se afirma que los enunciados necesarios a posteriori, propuestos por S. Kripke, exigen una comprensión débil de la necesidad; esto quiere decir: a) existencia contingente del designatum y b) dependencia racionalista en principios lógicos a priori, particularmente los de diferencia y de identidad. La principal consecuencia es que los enunciados necesarios a posteriori corresponden a instancias de dichos principios lógicos. Contrario al racionalismo, esto no exige que dichos enunciados sean a priori, pues su justificación requiere información empírica. Finalmente, se defiende (...) que la distinción entre denotación y designación permite sostener que la necesidad débil se aplica a las instancias de la clase, y no a esta, con lo que se evita el indeterminismo referencial. The article states that a posteriori necessary sentences as proposed by S. Kripke require a weak understanding of necessity. This means: a) contingent existence of designatum, and b) rationalist dependence on a priori logical principles, particularly those of difference and identity. The main consequence is that a posteriori necessary sentences correspond to instances of these logical principles. Contrary to rationalism, this does not require that these be a priori sentences, given that their justification requires empirical information. Finally, the article argues that the distinction between denotation and designation supports the idea that weak necessity applies to instances of the class, and cannot be applied to the class itself, thus avoiding referential indeterminism. (shrink)

1 This paper has been presented at the workshop “Time and Modality: A Round Table on Tense, Mood, and Modality”, Paris, December 2005, at a CUNY linguistics colloquium in May 2006, and at the 6th Workshop on Formal Linguistics in Florian´opolis, Brazil, August 2006. We thank the audiences at those presentations, in particular Orin Percus, Tim Stowell, Marcel den Dikken, Anna Szabolcsi, Chris Warnasch, Roberta Pires de Oliveira, Renato Miguel Basso, and Ana M¨uller. We thank Noam Chomsky, Cleo Condoravdi, and (...) Irene Heim for very helpful conversations about this material. We thank Bridget Copley for sharing with us her recent manuscript “What Should Should.. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of the meaning of `ought', and the distinction between weak necessity modals (`ought', `should') and strong necessity modals (`must', `have to'). I argue that there is nothing specially ``strong'' about strong necessity modals per se: uses of `Must p' predicate the (deontic/epistemic/etc.) necessity of the prejacent p of the actual world (evaluation world). The apparent ``weakness'' of weak necessity modals derives from their bracketing whether the necessity of (...) the prejacent is verified in the actual world. `Ought p' can be accepted without needing to settle that the relevant considerations (norms, expectations, etc.) that actually apply verify the necessity of p. I call the basic account a modal-past approach to the weak/strong necessity modal distinction (for reasons that become evident). Several ways of implementing the approach in the formal semantics/pragmatics are critically examined. The account systematizes a wide range of linguistic phenomena: it generalizes across flavors of modality; it elucidates a special role that weak necessity modals play in discourse and planning; it captures contrasting logical, expressive, and illocutionary properties of weak and strong necessity modals; and it sheds light on how a notion of `ought' is often expressed in other languages. These phenomena have resisted systematic explanation. In closing I briefly consider how linguistic inquiry into differences among necessity modals may improve theorizing on broader philosophical issues. (shrink)

Medical necessity (claiming that a medical intervention or care is – at minimum – reasonable, appropriate and acceptable) depends on empirical evidence and on the interpretation of that evidence. Evidence and its interpretation define the standard of care. This commentary argues that both the evidence base and its interpretation are currently weak gatekeepers. Empirical meta-research suggests that very few medical interventions have high quality evidence in support of their effectiveness and very few of them also have relatively thorough (...) assessments of their potential harms. Therefore, evidence on the risk-benefit ratios carries almost always very large uncertainty. Arbitration about medical necessity is thus left to the interpretation process. Professional guidelines are notoriously unreliable and biased in this regard. Regulatory approval ends up being the key arbitrator, but over the years the regulatory process has been subverted. Regulatory approval currently does not mean that an intervention has a favourable risk-benefit ratio, but simply that it can be marketed, sold and made profit from. The process leads to a tragedy of commons where the final victim is society at large: medical necessity is invoked as an alibi for medicine to absorb societal resources. (shrink)

We show that if the weak compactness of a cardinal is made indestructible by means of any preparatory forcing of a certain general type, including any forcing naively resembling the Laver preparation, then the cardinal was originally supercompact. We then apply this theorem to show that the hypothesis of supercompactness is necessary for certain proof schemata.

Weak ontic necessity is the ontic necessity expressed by “should/ought to” in English. An example of it is “I should be dead by now”. A feature of this necessity is that whether it holds at the present world is irrelevant to whether its prejacent holds at the present world. In this paper, by combining premise semantics and update semantics for conditionals, we present a logical theory for conditional weak ontic necessity based on context update. (...) A context is a set of ordered defaults, determining expected possible states of the present world. Sentences are evaluated with respect to contexts. When evaluating the conditional weak ontic necessity with respect to a context, we first update the context with the antecedent, then check whether the consequent holds with respect to the updated context. We compare this theory to some related works. The logic’s expressivity is studied. (shrink)

Weak ontic necessity is the ontic necessity expressed by “should” or “ought to”. An example of it is “I should be dead by now”. A feature of this necessity is that whether it holds is irrelevant to whether its underlying proposition holds. This necessity essentially involves time. This paper presents a logic for conditional weak ontic necessity in branching time. The logic’s language includes the next instant operator, the last instant operator, and the (...) operator for conditional weak ontic necessity. Formulas are evaluated at tuples consisting of a tree-based model, a context, a timeline, and an instant. A context is a set of ordered ontic laws determining expected timelines. When evaluating conditional weak ontic necessity, we first update the context with the antecedent, then check whether the consequent holds with respect to the updated context. We discuss some consequences of the formalization and compare it to some related work. We study the logic’s expressivity and axiomatize a special validity of it. (shrink)

The authors of this article contend that traditional corruption, which was largely blamed for the current situation in the Icelandic economy, was perhaps not the most fundamental reason for the ensuing crisis. The weak business culture and a symbiosis of business and politics have actually allowed for the bulk of self-erving and unethical decisions made by the Icelandic business and political elite. In order to illustrate this point, 10 expert interviews have been conducted within the period of 6 months (...) in 2009 to support in-depth research carried out by the authors. The article also discloses questionable business practices that have recently come to the attention of the public both in Iceland and abroad and that ultimately facilitated the downfall of the Icelandic economy. While traditional corruption has probably played its role in this downfall, the measures currently employed to determine its level did not account for various peculiarities of Icelandic society. The article thus argues that there was a high level of corruption in Iceland, but it was outside of the traditional definition. This other corruption has ultimately prevented the government from acting appropriately upon the questionable business practices mentioned above. The article also offers some general recommendations which should be useful to both policy makers and business leaders wishing to engage in business activities in a transparent, ethical manner and learn from the tragic Icelandic experience. Among these recommendations are the necessity to recognize the limitations of current definitions of corruption, as well as a word of caution to commercial enterprises to pay a close attention not only to commonly accepted indices and mainstream reports but also to a country's history, culture, and political environment, prior to making any sort of investment decisions in that country. (shrink)

There are well-known quasi-formal arguments that identity is a "strict" relation in at least the following three senses: (1) There is a single identity relation and a single distinctness relation; (2) There are no contingent cases of identity or distinctness; and (3) There are no vague or indeterminate cases of identity or distinctness. However, the situation is less clear cut than it at first may appear. There is a natural formal theory of identity that is very close to the standard (...) classical theory but which does not validate the formal analogues of (1)-(3). The core idea is simple: We weaken the Principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals from a conditional to an entailment and we adopt a weakly classical logic. This paper investigates this weakly classical theory of identity (and related theories) and discusses its philosophical ramifications. It argues that we can accept a reasonable theory of identity without committing ourselves to the uniqueness, necessity, or determinacy of identity. (shrink)

The idea that the epistemology of modality is in some sense a priori is a popular one, but it has turned out to be difficult to precisify in a way that does not expose it to decisive counterexamples. The most common precisifications follow Kripke’s suggestion that cases of necessary a posteriori truth that can be known a priori to be necessary if true ‘may give a clue to a general characterization of a posteriori knowledge of necessary truths’. The idea is (...) that whether it is contingent whether p can be known a priori for at least some broad range of sentences ‘p’. Recently, Al Casullo and Jens Kipper have discussed restrictions of such principles to atomic sentences. We show that decisive counterexamples even to such dramatically restricted Kripke-style principles can be constructed using minimal logical resources. We then consider further restrictions, and show that the counterexamples to the original principles can be turned into counterexamples to the further restricted principles. We conclude that, if there are any true restrictions of Kripke-style principles, then they are so weak as to be of little epistemological interest. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to argue against Alexander Bird‟s thesis (2001) that the law salt dissolves in water is metaphysically necessary. I briefly indicate Bird‟s argument for the necessity of such law, and then I provide a counter-argument to his thesis. In a general way, Bird wants to show that the existence of certain substances depends on the truth of certain laws, and that because of this the existence of such substances implies the existence of such laws. That (...) would make the laws existing at least while the substance it rules exists; what, for Bird, makes such laws metaphysically necessary. My counter-argument to Bird is that such conception apprehends just what we call “weak necessity”, and not the strong necessity we would like a metaphysically necessary law to have. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there are some sentences whose truth makes no demands on the world, being trivially true in that their truth-conditions are trivially met. I argue that this does not amount to their truth-conditions being met necessarily: we need a non-modal understanding of the notion of the demands the truth of a sentence makes, lest we be blinded to certain conceptual possibilities. I defend the claim that the truths of pure mathematics and set theory are trivially (...) true, and hence accepting their truth brings no ontological commitment; I further defend the claim that the truths of applied mathematics and set theory do not demand the existence of numbers or sets. While the notion of a demand must not be reduced to anything modal, I nonetheless argue that sentences that are trivially true must also be necessary, lest we violate a very weak version of the principle that truth depends on the world. I further argue that all necessary truths are trivially true, lest we admit unexplained necessities. I end by showing one important consequence of this: I argue that if there are truthmakers for intrinsic predications, they must be states of affairs rather than tropes. (shrink)

In order to redefine barbarism, a hermeneutical framework is needed. The contemporary socio-cultural context and the transformations that have occurred during the last decades represent the premises for a new barbarism. In redefining barbarism, its relationship with civilization and culture should be first considered. Cultural mutations, together with the historical and political phenomena involved in contemporary civilizations’ reorganization as set forth in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Samuel P. Huntington), offer the theoretical background for the (...) discourse wherein barbarism could revive and take an appearance other than the common one. The necessity of reinterpreting barbarism is backed up by other variables such as its structural inconsistency and weakness, which most definitely diminish its impact on individuals. Following the 20th century philosophical tendency of harshly critical thinking, all these point to the current weak character of barbarism. Thus so-called “weak barbarism” is reinterpreted evolutionally for a better reception among contemporary cultural philosophy, axiological and ethical studies. (shrink)

In order to redefine barbarism, a hermeneutical framework is needed. The contemporary socio-cultural context and the transformations that have occurred during the last decades represent the premises for a new barbarism. In redefining barbarism, its relationship with civilization and culture should be first considered. Cultural mutations, together with the historical and political phenomena involved in contemporary civilizations’ reorganization as set forth in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Samuel P. Huntington), offer the theoretical background for the (...) discourse wherein barbarism could revive and take an appearance other than the common one. The necessity of reinterpreting barbarism is backed up by other variables such as its structural inconsistency and weakness, which most definitely diminish its impact on individuals. Following the 20th century philosophical tendency of harshly critical thinking, all these point to the current weak character of barbarism. Thus so-called “weak barbarism” is reinterpreted evolutionally for a better reception among contemporary cultural philosophy, axiological and ethical studies. (shrink)

In conclusion, then, the notion of temporal necessity is certainly queer and perhaps a misnomer. It really has little to do with temporality per se and everything to do with counterfactual openness or closedness. We have seen that the future is as unalterable as the past, but that this purely logical truth is not antithetical to freedom or contingency. Moreover, we have found certain past facts are counterfactually open in that were future events or actualities to be other than (...) they will be, these past facts would have been different as a consequence. God's beliefs about the future are such past facts. Moreover, the effects of actions which God would have taken had He believed differently are also such past facts. Oddly enough, then, virtually any past fact is potentially counterfactually open, and the only necessity that remains is purely de facto. We, of course, do not in general know which events of the past depend counterfactually on present actions, and those cases we do know about seem rather trivial. Our intuitions of the necessity, unalterability, and unpreventability of the past as opposed to the future stem from the impossibility of backward causation, which is precluded by the dynamic nature of time and becoming. But the counterfactual dependence of God's beliefs on future events or actualities is not a case of backward causation: rather future-tense propositions are true in virtue of what will happen, given a view of truth as correspondence, and God simply has the essential property of knowing all and only true propositions. With regard to the future, virtually all facts are counterfactually open, and therefore future-tense propositions are not temporally necessary. Propositions thus move from being temporally contingent to being temporally necessary when all the opportunities to affect things counterfactually have slipped by. Hence, the mere fact that an event is past is no indication that it is counterfactually closed. This is especially evident in the case of God's foreknowledge. If we say that God foreknows that I shall do x and therefore I cannot refrain from doing x, lest I change God's past foreknowledge, we are being deceived by a modality which has nothing to do with my power or freedom. All that is impossible is the conjunction of God's foreknowledge that p and of ~ p; but this modality in sensu composito has no bearing on my ability to act such that ~ p would be true and God would have foreknown differently. Temporal necessity, then, turns out to be only obliquely temporal and modally weak, certainly no threat to freedom or divine foreknowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that causal theories of memory are typically committed to two independent, non-mutually entailing theses. The first thesis pertains to the necessity of appropriate causation in memory, specifying a condition token memories need to satisfy. The second pertains to the explanation of memory reliability in causal terms and it concerns memory as a type of mental state. Post-causal theories of memory can reject only the first (weak post-causalism) or both (strong post-causalism) theses. Upon this (...) backdrop, I examine Werning’s (2020) causalist argument from probabilistic correlation. I argue that it doesn’t establish the necessity of appropriate causation and thus it can only target strong post-causalist theories. I end up by presenting some general considerations, suggesting that memories may not always be causally linked to past experiences. (shrink)

The unconditional version of motivational internalism says that if an agent sincerely judges that to φ in circumstances C is the best option available to her, then, as a matter of conceptual necessity, she will be motivated to φ in C. This position faces a powerful counterargument according to which it is possible for various cases of practical irrationality to completely defeat an agent’s moral motivation while, at the same time, leaving her appreciation of her moral reasons intact. In (...) this paper, I will argue that weakness of will, as the paradigmatic case of practical irrationality, and all other cases of practical irrationality that feature in standard formulations of this argument do not represent genuine counterexamples to this version of motivational internalism. In this sense, the main aim of this paper is to show that proponents of this internalist position are well justified in their denial of the claim that there are people who are completely unmotivated by their judgments about what is the best option available to them. (shrink)

We consider a version of so called T x W logic for historical necessity in the sense of R.H. Thomason (1984), which is somewhat special in three respects: (i) it is explicitly based on two-dimensional modal logic in the sense of Segerberg (1973); (ii) for reasons of applicability to interesting fields of philosophical logic, it conceives of time as being discrete and finite in the sense of having a beginning and an end; and (iii) it utilizes the technique of (...) systematic frame constants in order to handle the problem of irreflexivity in tense logics, well known since Gabbay (1981). Axiomatizations are given for two infinite hierarchies of two-dimensional modal tense logics, one without and one with the characteristic operators for historical necessity and possibility. Strong and weak completeness results are obtained for both hierarchies as well as a result to the effect that two approaches to their semantics are equivalent, much in the spirit of Di Maio and Zanardo (1996) and von Kutschera (1997). (shrink)

The aim of the present article is to consider the shortcomings of the physicalist rainfall example set forth by Aristotle in Physics II.8. I first outline the ancient physicalist account of the coming-to-be of natural organisms and the accompanying rejection of the teleological character of such processes. Then I examine the rainfall example itself. The fundamental difficulty is that rainfall does not appear to have a proper nature. Hence it is not natural in the strict sense and cannot be used (...) in arguments either for or against natural teleology. Rainfall can at most have an end in a weak sense, which makes it inadequate as a paradigm. Furthermore, the physicalist conception of action for an end is itself flawed. I argue that they construe it anthropomorphically and falsely presuppose a symmetry between coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be. I would like to thank Hasse Hamalainen and Marcin Karas for looking at earlier drafts of this paper. I am also especially grateful for the numerous remarks and suggestions of three anonymous referees. (shrink)

As we’ve seen in the last chapter, there is good linguistic reason to categorize negations (and negative operators in general) by which De Morgan laws they support. The weakest negative operators (merely downward monotonic) support only two De Morgan laws;1 medium-strength negative operators support a third;2 and strong negative operators support all four. As we’ve also seen, techniques familiar from modal logic are of great use in giving unifying theories of negative operators. In particular, Dunn’s (1990) distributoid theory allows us (...) to generate relational semantics for many negations. However, the requirements of distributoid theory are a bit too strict for use in modeling the weakest negations. For a relational semantics to work, an operator must either distribute or antidistribute over either conjunction or disjunction; but the merely downward monotonic operators do not. Thus, a unifying semantics cannot be had in distributoid theory. In the (more familiar) study of positive modalities, there is a parallel result. Normal necessities distribute over conjunction, and normal possibilities over disjunction. When these distributions break down, a relational semantics is no longer appropriate. Here, there is a somewhat familiar solution: neighborhood semantics. In this chapter, I’ll adapt neighborhood semantics to the less familiar case of negative modalities, showing how it can be used to give a single semantic framework appropriate to all the pertinent sorts of negative operators. (shrink)

Over the last three decades, joint action has received various definitions, which for all their differences share many features. However, they cannot fit some perplexing cases of weak joint action, such as demonstrations, where agents rely on distinct epistemic sources, and as a result, have no first-hand knowledge about each other. I argue that one major reason why the definition of such collective actions is akin to the classical ones is that it crucially relies on the concept of common (...) knowledge. To this end, I first argue for the necessity of common knowledge for joint action in general due to the increased reliability of success it entails. I then defend the relevance of common knowledge against several criticisms, point at an adequate weakening, and discuss alternative approaches. Although structurally weaker, the common knowledge has a richer content in weak joint actions. As a result, even if the links between individuals are seriously stretched, much is still shared among them. Weak joint actions still require considerable cognitive abilities indeed. (shrink)

Why do we grant religious exemptions? Many distinguished scholars and judges have been drawn to the idea that conscience is entitled to special protection, because a person in its grip cannot obey the law without betraying his deepest, most identity-defining commitments. The weakness of this justification is shown by philosopher Harry Frankfurt's account of what he calls “volitional necessity,” which clarifies the structure of the argument that invocations of conscience imply. Frankfurt shows that a person can be bound in (...) this way by allegiances that there is no reason to respect; volitional necessity can arise from anything at all that a person cares about. Conscience is thus a poor basis for claims upon other people. Accommodation must rather depend on some idea of the value of religion. (shrink)

Howe et al. fail to provide evidence that practice is sufficient and ignore evidence of high ability before instruction. They unsuccessfully discount savants; provide weak evidence against heritability of music, criticize retrospective evidence selectively, using it when it supports their position; and ultimately both accept and deny talent. Finally, they conflate a scientific question with one of policy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Papirius and the Chickens, or Machiavelli on the Necessity of Interpreting ReligionJohn M. Najemy*No aspect of Machiavelli’s thought elicits a wider range of interpretations than religion, and one may wonder why his utterances on this subject appear to move in so many different directions and cause his readers to see such different things. One reason is of course his famous challenge to conventional piety in the advice to (...) princes (in chapter 18 of The Prince) that, while it is important to appear to be “all compassion, faith, integrity, humanity, and religione, and there is nothing more necessary for a prince than to appear to have the last of these,” these “qualities” can actually be “damaging” if a prince insists on observing them at all times. For it is sometimes necessary to act “against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religione.” 1 Machiavelli probably never wrote more famous or infamous words than these, even though they express an obvious, and hardly original, truth about all politics. But the world of the later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reformations and religious absolutisms could not tolerate such honesty, and Machiavelli’s reputation was quickly tarred with accusations of devilish immorality by the very societies that thought it was godly to burn heretics. On the issue of religion Machiavelli became, and to some extent remains, a convenient scapegoat often blamed for the decline of religion in the modern world, all of which has no doubt intensified the polemical and ideological nature of the debates surrounding his views of religion in general and Christianity in particular. [End Page 659]The polar positions in the interpretation of Machiavelli’s ideas about religion are represented by Leo Strauss and Sebastian de Grazia. For Strauss, Machiavelli was a “teacher of evil,” a “blasphemer,” and a purveyor of lessons of a “diabolical” and “soulless character” whose purpose was to sabotage the heritage of thought and morality inherited from both Christianity and Greek philosophy. 2 De Grazia, by contrast, has recently given us a Machiavelli who “discourses about God always in the conventional reverent attitude,” who “never questions that there is good and evil,” and who, “by associating virtuous political action with grace and glory... argues that through this kind of active and political virtue men conform to God’s desire.” “Behind Niccolò’s insistence on political action,” says de Grazia, “stands God. He grants His grace when it is earned—in political coin.” 3 Part of the fascination of Machiavelli scholarship is the mystery of how this most outspoken and direct of political thinkers—a writer who pulled no punches and minced no words—could be the common referent of such wildly different readings. But it is equally curious to observe how uncannily these extreme positions mirror each other. Both give us true believers, one in the Word, the other in the subversion of the Word; and in both cases a believer who is always of a piece, true to himself, and possessed of an unshakeable commitment—whether positive or negative—toward the transcendent truth of Christianity. In short, for all the obvious differences, the similarities between Strauss’s “diabolical” Machiavelli and de Grazia’s reverent “friend of God” remind one of the old myth that devils are after all only fallen angels.The papers in this forum should certainly remove any doubt about the importance of religion in Machiavelli’s thought. They remind us of the prominence of religious language and examples in Machiavelli’s texts: his call for the “redemption” of Italy in the last chapter of The Prince; the esteem in which he holds the heads and founders of religions, whom he declares, in Discourses 1.10, to be the most praised of all famous men; the crucial appeal to the figure of Moses as the prototype of both founders of states and liberators of enslaved peoples; the central role that Machiavelli attributes to religion among the factors responsible for Rome’s power, unity, and political success; and his provocative critique of Christianity, which leads him, in a number of places, to blame the Christian faith for the relative weakness of both modern states and the modern ethic of citizenship. 4 The authors... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.1 (2005) 1-19 [Access article in PDF] God's Immutability and the Necessity of Descartes's Eternal Truths Dan Kaufman Descartes's doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths (henceforth "the Creation Doctrine") has been thought to be a particularly problematic doctrine, both internally inconsistent and detrimental to Descartes's system as a whole. According to the Creation Doctrine, the eternal truths, such as the (...) truths of mathematics and those concerning true and immutable natures, are freely created by God.1 The Creation Doctrine has led several scholars to think that Descartes held (or was committed to) the view that the eternal truths are not necessary truths; in fact, there are no necessary truths if Descartes is correct.2 [End Page 1]In fact, however, Descartes held both of the following.The eternal truths are freely created by God.The eternal truths are necessarily true.That Descartes held (1) is uncontroversial; in fact, it is the characteristic thesis of his Creation Doctrine. However, his commitment to (2) is more controversial. I believe the controversy surrounding (2) arises precisely because Descartes' acceptance of (1) is so uncontroversial. That is, some have thought that his acceptance of (1) eliminates any possibility of accepting (2). This view is mistaken. In several texts, it is clear that Descartes believes that the eternal truths are necessarily true; this is especially noticeable in the 2 May 1644 letter to Mesland (AT IV 118; CSMK 235). The task, then, is to account for the necessity of the eternal truths within the confines of the Creation Doctrine; that is, to explain the fact that (2) is true, given that (1) is true.3 Unfortunately, Descartes says precious little about this issue. To make matters worse, there is a scarcity of treatments of this issue in the literature; and the literature that does address this issue tends to treat it quickly and vaguely, perhaps recognizing the difficulty of addressing it in any detail. In this paper, I attempt to remedy this unfortunate situation.I begin by examining the most prominent interpretation of Descartes's explanation of the necessity of the eternal truths: the Immutability Interpretation.4 This interpretation is given by Margaret Osler and most prominently by Edwin Curley.5 According to this interpretation, the eternal truths are necessarily true because they are created by God, and God's will is immutable. I will show that this interpretation is incorrect: It is either too weak to explain the necessity of the eternal truths or it is too strong in that it would commit Descartes to necessitarianism, [End Page 2] a view he does not hold.6 I also show that some suggestions for salvaging the Immutability Interpretation fall short. In the final section I present an alternative interpretation. My interpretation has a firm basis in Descartes's texts, does not have the shortcomings of the Immutability Interpretation, and has several virtues of its own. 1. Immutability Before examining the role, if any, that God's immutability actually plays in Descartes's explanation of the necessity of the eternal truths, it may be helpful to have a working account of God's immutability. To be immutable is not merely to be unchanging, but rather to be unable to change. That is: I1: x is immutable iff x is essentially unchanging.7We must recognize, however, that there are extrinsic and relational properties that a thing may acquire or lose without any real change in the thing; that is, there are so-called Cambridge changes that something may undergo without thereby being mutable. For example if x is five feet tall at t and x is five foot five at some later time t´, then x has really changed; but if x is not an uncle at t and x is an uncle at some later time t´, then x has not really changed in virtue of acquiring this property. The idea is that there are some properties which are, to use Edward Wierenga's and Nicholas Wolterstorff's term, "change... (shrink)

The article argues that Meillassoux's 'After Finitude' underestimates the nature and profundity of Hume's sceptical challenge; it neglects the fact that Hume's scepticism concerns final causes (and agrees fundamentally with Bacon and Descartes in this respect), and that in Hume even the operations of reason do not furnish entirely a priori knowledge. We contend that Hume himself institutes a form of correlationism (which in part showed Kant the way to counter the sceptical challenge via transcendental idealism), and sought not merely (...) to abolish the 'principle of sufficient reason' but to salvage it in a weak form, in turning his attention to the grounds for our beliefs in necessity. We argue further that the 'mathematizability' of properties is not a sufficient criterion to yield realist, non-correlational knowledge, or to demonstrate the 'irremediable realism' of the 'ancestral' statement. Finally, we contend that Meillassoux himself relies on a certain 'Kantian moment' which exempts the reasoning subject from otherwise 'omnipotent' chaos, and that ultimately the 'speculative materialist' position remains exposed to the original Humean sceptical challenge. (shrink)

Population ageing is a fact of all advanced economies. Fewer people are born all the while current members live longer. The support which old people have come to depend on, for example through elderly care and pensions, thus becomes increasingly expensive. This accentuates an assurance problem. Although it has been and still is the case that the young are willing to support the currently old, this support is not unconditional. In return they trust that coming generations will support them one (...) day. Historically pro-old welfare state institutions (e.g., pension systems) have offered individuals this assurance: their claim on future generation to support them has been credible simply by positive economic and demographic development. Economic growth has been a blessing for the cooperation between generations necessary to realise old age support. This paper describes this assurance problem in simple game theoretical terms, argues that it has been neglected in historically prominent justifications of pro-old welfare state institutions, and discusses what can be done to preserve trust in times of population ageing and weak economic growth. (shrink)

According to deontological approaches to justification, we can analyze justification in deontic terms. In this paper, I try to advance the discussion of deontological approaches by applying recent insights in the semantics of deontic modals. Specifically, I use the distinction between weak necessity modals and strong necessity modals to make progress on a question that has received surprisingly little discussion in the literature, namely: ‘What’s the best version of a deontological approach?’ The two most obvious hypotheses are (...) the Permissive View, according to which justified expresses permission, and the Obligatory View, according to which justified expresses some species of obligation. I raise difficulties for both of these hypotheses. In light of these difficulties, I propose a new position, according to which justified expresses a property I call faultlessness, defined as the dual of weak necessity modals. According to this view, an agent is justified in phi-ing iff it’s not the case that she should [/ought] not phi. I argue that this ‘Faultlessness View’ gives us precisely what’s needed to avoid the problems facing the Permissive and Obligatory Views. (shrink)

Abstract -/- Kratzer’s semantics for the deontic modals ought, must, etc., is criticized and improvements are suggested. Specifically, a solution is offered for the strong/weak, must/ought contrast, based on connecting must to right and ought to good as their respective ordering norms. A formal treatment of the semantics of must is proposed. For the semantics of ought it is argued that good enough should replace best in the formula giving truth conditions. A semantics for supposed to slightly different from (...) that for ought is proposed that connects interestingly with the “normative judgement internalism” problem. An extended analysis of the workings of the ordering source in Kratzer semantics reveals several problems and related possible solutions. And finally, it is argued that ‘We must do the right things” and “We ought to pursue good things” are provably necessary in Kratzer semantics, which is, I think, a welcome result, although, since formal, does not tell what are the right and good things. (shrink)

Discussions about the meaning of the word “ought” are pulled in two apparently competing directions. First, in ethical theory this word is used in the paradigmatic statement of ethical principles and conclusions about what some agent is obligated to do. This leads some ethical theorists to claim that the word “ought” describes a real relation, roughly, of being obligated to (realism) or expresses some non-cognitive attitude toward agents acting in certain ways (expressivism). Second, in theoretical linguistics this word is classified (...) as a modal auxiliary verb alongside words like “might,” “may,” “can,” “must,” etc. This leads some theoretical linguists to claim that the word “ought” is a weak necessity modal, which can be modeled with universal quantification over a restricted set of possible worlds. This chapter seeks some resolution of this tension by showing how versions of realism and expressivism can be modified in light of the best semantics of “ought” as a weak necessity modal. In addition, the chapter explains how this semantics might point to a third view—inferentialism—that accounts for the meaning of “ought” not in terms of what relation it describes, nor in terms of what attitude it expresses, but rather in terms of its inferential role. (shrink)

This paper develops a compositional, type-driven constraint semantic theory for a fragment of the language of subjective uncertainty. In the particular application explored here, the interpretation function of constraint semantics yields not propositions but constraints on credal states as the semantic values of declarative sentences. Constraints are richer than propositions in that constraints can straightforwardly represent assessments of the probability that the world is one way rather than another. The richness of constraints helps us model communicative acts in essentially the (...) same way that we model agents’ credences. Moreover, supplementing familiar truth-conditional theories of epistemic modals with constraint semantics helps capture contrasts between strong necessity and possibility modals, on the one hand, and weak necessity modals, on the other. (shrink)

This paper discusses an important puzzle about the semantics of indicative conditionals and deontic necessity modals (should, ought, etc.): the Miner Puzzle (Parfit, ms; Kolodny and MacFarlane, J Philos 107:115–143, 2010). Rejecting modus ponens for the indicative conditional, as others have proposed, seems to solve a version of the puzzle, but is actually orthogonal to the puzzle itself. In fact, I prove that the puzzle arises for a variety of sophisticated analyses of the truth-conditions of indicative conditionals. A comprehensive (...) solution requires rethinking the relationship between relevant information (what we know) and practical rankings of possibilities and actions (what to do). I argue that (i) relevant information determines whether considerations of value may be treated as reasons for actions that realize them and against actions that don’t, (ii) incorporating this normative fact requires a revision of the standard ordering semantics for weak (but not for strong) deontic necessity modals, and (iii) an off-the-shelf semantics for weak deontic necessity modals, due to von Fintel and Iatridou, which distinguishes “basic” and “higher-order” ordering sources, and interprets weak deontic necessity modals relative to both, is well-suited to this task. The prominence of normative considerations in our proposal suggests a more general methodological lesson: formal semantic analysis of natural language modals expressing normative concepts demands that close attention be paid to the nature of the underlying normative phenomena. (shrink)

This paper argues that the innovation of an ordering source parameter in the standard Lewis-Kratzer semantics for modals was a mistake, at least for English auxiliaries like ‘ought’, and that a simpler dyadic semantics (as proposed in my earlier work) provides a superior account of normative uses of modals. I programmatically investigate problems arising from (i) instrumental conditionals, (ii) gradability and “weak necessity”, (iii) information-sensitivity, and (iv) conflicts, and show how the simpler semantics provides intuitive solutions given three (...) basic moves: (1) an end-relational analysis of normative modality, (2) a “most” analysis of “weak necessity”, and (3) well-motivated appeals to pragmatics. I conclude with metasemantic observations about the desiderata for a semantics for ‘ought’. (shrink)

To reconcile true claims of de re necessity with the supposedly contingent existence of the concrete objects those claims are typically about, Kripkean essentialists invoke weak necessity. The claim that a is necessarily F is held to be equivalent to the claim that necessarily, if a exists then a is F. This strategy faces a barrage of serious objections a proper subset of which shows that the strategy fails to achieve its intended purpose. Relief can be provided (...) via recourse to a markedly non-Kripkean version of essentialism.1. (shrink)

Discussions about the meaning of the word “ought” are pulled in two apparently competing directions. First, in ethical theory this word is used in the paradigmatic statement of ethical principles and conclusions about what some agent is obligated to do. This leads some ethical theorists to claim that the word “ought” describes a real relation, roughly, of being obligated to or expresses some non-cognitive attitude toward agents acting in certain ways. Second, in theoretical linguistics this word is classified as a (...) modal auxiliary verb alongside words like “might,” “may,” “can,” “must,” etc. This leads some theoretical linguists to claim that the word “ought” is a weak necessity modal, which can be modeled with universal quantification over a restricted set of possible worlds. This chapter seeks some resolution of this tension by showing how versions of realism and expressivism can be modified in light of the best semantics of “ought” as a weak necessity modal. In addition, the chapter explains how this semantics might point to a third view—inferentialism—that accounts for the meaning of “ought” not in terms of what relation it describes, nor in terms of what attitude it expresses, but rather in terms of its inferential role. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the distribution and interpretation of a non-temporal use of the future tense in Italian, called ‘presumptive’ or ‘epistemic’, which we label here PF. We first distinguish PF from its closest modal relatives, namely epistemic necessity/possibility/likelihood modals, as well as weak necessity modals. We then propose an account of PF in declaratives and interrogatives that treats it as a special comparative subjective likelihood modal, and test its empirical predictions. A theoretical lesson drawn from (...) this detailed study of the semantics of PF is that semantics needs sharpened theoretical tools to be able to capture the fine-grained distinctions languages make when it comes to signaling modulated epistemic commitment to a proposition. (shrink)

The main intent of this thesis is to defend that the laws of nature are better thought as transcendent universals, such as platonic governism suggests, and that they are metaphysically necessary in a strong way, such as the heterodox version of such platonism defends. With this intention, we sustain that physical symmetries are essential consequences of the laws of nature – what solves the challenge of symmetries – thus being metaphysically necessary, without being governist's necessitation laws. First, we will show (...) what laws of nature are and the reasons to reject other metaphysical theories and to accept platonic governism. Soon after, we will present the challenge of symmetries and the reasons to prefer the platonic governist answer over dispositionalist, regularist, aristotelic (governism), counterfatualist and primitivist ones. At last, we will define what is the metaphysical necessity, argue for the strong metaphysical necessity of laws and their consequences, and show why the reasons for the contingency or weak necessity of laws are bad theoretical paths. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to argue against Alexander Bird‟s thesis (2001) that the law salt dissolves in water is metaphysically necessary. I briefly indicate Bird‟s argument for the necessity of such law, and then I provide a counter-argument to his thesis. In a general way, Bird wants to show that the existence of certain substances depends on the truth of certain laws, and that because of this the existence of such substances implies the existence of such laws. That (...) would make the laws existing at least while the substance it rules exists; what, for Bird, makes such laws metaphysically necessary. My counter-argument to Bird is that such conception apprehends just what we call “weak necessity”, and not the strong necessity we would like a metaphysically necessary law to have. (shrink)

I discuss Josef Seifert, a realist phenomenologist, and David Oderberg, an Aristotelian. Both endorse essences, understood as objective quiddities. Both argue that no law of nature is strongly necessary: i.e. true in every possible world. But they disagree about weak necessity of laws: Seifert argues that no law is true in every possible world in which its referring expressions are non-empty, while Oderberg argues that some is. I restate, relate, and review reasons of both authors for each of (...) those theses. Seifert’s reasons include God’s ability to do miracles, conceivability of counterinstances to laws, and many others. Oderberg’s reasons include dependence of laws on particulars, depiction of laws as truths about properties necessarily connected with essences, and explanation of persistent regularities by means of that necessary connection. I argue that no reason of either Seifert or Oderberg is convincing, as its stands. But I also argue that given God and his ability to do miracles, the idea of “meaningful” but non-necessary connection between essences — an idea endorsed but insuffi ciently utilized by Seifert — is a better essentialist explanation of persistent regularities. This explanation implies that no law is necessary, be it weakly or strongly. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the interaction of reasons and argues that reasons for an action may transmit to the necessary means of that action. Analyzing exactly how this phenomenon may be captured by principles governing normative transmission has proved an intricate task in recent years. In this paper, I assess three formulations focusing on normative transmission and necessary means: Ought Necessity, Strong Necessity, and Weak Necessity. My focus is on responding to two of the main objections (...) raised against normative transmission for necessary means, in that they seem to give us reasons for buying tickets to plays we have no intention of seeing and that the principles give us the wrong result when the means are necessary but not sufficient. Even though these objections have been discussed previously, the counterarguments have so far relied on rejecting premises that the proponents of these objections are unlikely to concede. In this paper, I show how we may answer the objections in a way more likely to convince proponents of the objections. The result is an argument for a key aspect when it comes to understanding how reasons and ends-means normativity function. Normative transmission from ends to necessary means is not only interesting at the structural level, it is also possible to argue that it has implications for areas as diverse as philosophy of rationality, political philosophy and applied ethics. (shrink)

Multilocation and Minimal Mereology do not mix well. It has been pointed out that Three-Dimensionalism, which can be construed as multilocation-friendly, runs into trouble with Weak Supplementation. But in fact, regardless of one’s theory of persistence, if someone posits the possibility of any one of several kinds of multilocation, he or she will not be able to maintain the necessity of any of the three axioms of Minimal Mereology: the Transitivity of Proper Parthood, the Asymmetry of Proper Parthood, (...) and Weak Supplementation. In fact, positing even the mere conceivability of cases involving multilocation will require the denial of the analyticity of Minimal Mereology. In response to this, some have claimed that we ought to relativise parthood, either to one region or to two. Unfortunately, if we replace the axioms of Minimal Mereology with region-relativised counterparts, we will not be able to capture the intuitions that supported the original axioms. The only adequate solution, I maintain, is to restrict multilocation to a domain outside the scope of the rules we intuitively take to govern the parthood relation. For those who take Minimal Mereology to be necessary and universal, that will mean relinquishing the possibility of multilocation. (shrink)