Abstract

Conventionalism about logical necessity has, since Quine, been criticised for falling into a vicious regress. The conventionalist model involves a base class of directly stipulated necessary truths, and all other logical necessities are taken to follow from this base. The essentialist model described by Hale is constructed in a broadly similar fashion: there is a class of those necessities which hold directly in virtue of the natures of things, and other necessities are from this class derivative. Hale expresses a concern that the similarity of the two models might leave the essentialist position prey to a similar regress, but argues that such a situation will not arise. This should prompt a question: if the models are similar, could the solution not be also? In other words, can the conventionalist follow the essentialist to escape regress? This paper will offer a negative answer to this question. We will assume that Hale’s attempt to avert disaster for the essentialist was successful, but argue that the route taken by Hale is not open to the conventionalist, and that in attempting to take it the conventionalist fails to avoid regress. The paper will end with an attempt to generalise what we have seen to the conclusion that conventionalism about logical necessity cannot ever avoid regress. Keywords Modality, essentialism, conventionalism, regress, Hale.