more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
What we need to know, in order to know what is empirically necessary, is some empirical fact plus our conventions that tell us which truths are necessary given which empirical facts.
Gist of Idea
To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary
Source
Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.4)
Book Ref
Sidelle,Alan: 'Necessity, Essence and Individuation' [Cornell 1989], p.100
A Reaction
I take this attack on a posteriori necessities to be the most persuasive part of Sidelle's case, but you can't just put all of our truths down to convention. There are stabilities in the world, as well as in our conventions.
| 18726 | For each necessity in the world there is an arbitrary rule of language [Wittgenstein] |
| 15233 | If natural necessity is used to include or exclude some predicate, the predicate is conceptually necessary [Harré/Madden] |
| 15242 | Having a child is contingent for a 'man', necessary for a 'father'; the latter reflects a necessity of nature [Harré/Madden] |
| 13973 | A key achievement of Kripke is showing that important modalities are not linguistic in source [Soames] |
| 12433 | If necessity rests on linguistic conventions, those are contingent, so there is no necessity [Hale] |
| 15027 | If truths are necessary 'by convention', that seems to make them contingent [Sider] |
| 15028 | Conventionalism doesn't seem to apply to examples of the necessary a posteriori [Sider] |
| 15032 | Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider] |
| 15179 | To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle] |
| 6582 | Conventions can only work if they are based on something non-conventional [Fogelin] |
| 14478 | Modal Conventionalism says modality is analytic, not intrinsic to the world, and linguistic [Thomasson] |