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Full Idea
To say an object is soluble in water is to say that it would dissolve if it were in water,..which implies that 'necessarily if x is in water then x dissolves'. Yet we do not know if there is a suitable sense of 'necessarily' into which we can so quantify.
Gist of Idea
We can't say 'necessarily if x is in water then x dissolves' if we can't quantify modally
Source
Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953], §4)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'From a Logical Point of View' [Harper and Row 1963], p.158
A Reaction
This is why there has been a huge revival of scientific essentialism - because Krike seems to offer exacty the account which Quine said was missing. So can you have modal logic without rigid designation?
| 9201 | Whether 9 is necessarily greater than 7 depends on how '9' is described [Quine, by Fine,K] |
| 9203 | We can't quantify in modal contexts, because the modality depends on descriptions, not objects [Quine, by Fine,K] |
| 10925 | Failure of substitutivity shows that a personal name is not purely referential [Quine] |
| 10926 | Quantifying into referentially opaque contexts often produces nonsense [Quine] |
| 14645 | To be necessarily greater than 7 is not a trait of 7, but depends on how 7 is referred to [Quine] |
| 10928 | Maybe we can quantify modally if the objects are intensional, but it seems unlikely [Quine] |
| 10930 | Quantification into modal contexts requires objects to have an essence [Quine] |
| 10927 | Necessity only applies to objects if they are distinctively specified [Quine] |
| 10931 | We can't say 'necessarily if x is in water then x dissolves' if we can't quantify modally [Quine] |