more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
The need to add a note of necessity to 'all black crows are black' could be met by a generalisation over classes (what belongs to sets x and y belongs to y), or maybe be quantifying over possible particulars.
Gist of Idea
Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia
Source
Willard Quine (On Multiplying Entities [1974], p.262)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'Ways of Paradox and other essays' [Harvard 1976], p.262
A Reaction
He dislikes the second strategy because 'unactualized particulars are an obscure and troublesome lot'. The second is the strategy of Lewis. I think necessity starts to creep back in as soon as you ask WHY a generalisation holds true.
8205 | Explaining events just by bodies can't explain two events identical in space-time [Quine] |
8206 | Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia [Quine] |
8207 | The quest for simplicity drove scientists to posit new entities, such as molecules in gases [Quine] |
8208 | In arithmetic, ratios, negatives, irrationals and imaginaries were created in order to generalise [Quine] |