Necessitism and Contingentism
Edited by Peter Fritz (Australian Catholic University)
About this topic
Summary | Necessitism is the view that necessarily, everything is necessarily something, where quantifiers are meant to be read unrestrictedly and modal operators are meant to be read as expressing metaphysical modality. More briefly, necessitism can be stated as the view that it is necessary what there is. Contingentism is the negation of necessitism. To illustrate the dispute between necessitists and contingentists, assume that Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was in fact childless, could have had a child. It follows with necessitism that there is actually something which could have been a child of Wittgenstein. Necessitists will typically hold that although this individual could have been a child, it is actually neither a child nor human; it is, as one may put it, a merely possible human. Contingentists typically hold that since Wittgenstein actually had no children, there is actually nothing which could have been a child of Wittgenstein. According to them, this case thus constitutes a counterexample to necessitism, witnessing that there could be something which actually is nothing, in the sense that actually, nothing is identical to it. |
Key works | The distinction between necessitism and contingentism was introduced in Williamson 2010, in order to replace the distinction between actualism and possibilism, which Williamson argues to be obscure. Williamson has argued for necessitism in several publications, starting with Williamson 1990. Williamson 2013 is a book-length defense of necessitism. Discussions of it by different authors can be found in Yli-Vakkuri & McCullagh 2017, along with replies by Williamson. |
Introductions | Williamson 2014 |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Actualism and Possibilism (167)
- Counterpart Theory (137)
- Haecceitism (82)
- Essence and Essentialism (1,078)
- De Re Modality, Misc (173)
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Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Lynne Tirrell Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |