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Single Idea 9216

[filed under theme 10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 1. Sources of Necessity ]

Full Idea

The three sources of necessity - the identity of things, the natural order, and the normative order - have their own peculiar forms of necessity. The three main areas of human enquiry - metaphysics, science and ethics - each has its own necessity.

Gist of Idea

Each area of enquiry, and its source, has its own distinctive type of necessity

Source

Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 6)

Book Ref

Fine,Kit: 'Modality and Tense' [OUP 2005], p.260

A Reaction

I would treat necessity in ethics with caution, if it is not reducible to natural or metaphysical necessity. Fine's proposal is interesting, but I did not find it convincing, especially in its view that metaphysical necessity doesn't intrude into nature.

The 28 ideas with the same theme [general views on what gives rise to necessity]:

4822 Divine nature makes all existence and operations necessary, and nothing is contingent [Spinoza]
6181 Necessity cannot be extracted from an empirical proposition [Kant]
4192 All necessity arises from causation, which is conditioned; there is no absolute or unconditioned necessity [Schopenhauer]
4743 The truth-maker for a truth must necessitate that truth [Armstrong]
12687 Metaphysical necessities are those depending on the essential nature of things [Ellis]
16984 I don't think possible worlds reductively reveal the natures of modal operators etc. [Kripke]
3867 De re necessity arises from the way the world is [Newton-Smith]
14629 If we are told the source of necessity, this seems to be a regress if the source is not already necessary [Blackburn]
14529 If something underlies a necessity, is that underlying thing necessary or contingent? [Blackburn, by Hale/Hoffmann,A]
12187 Objectual modal realists believe in possible worlds; non-objectual ones rest it on the actual world [McFetridge]
13374 To analyse modality, we must give accounts of objects, properties and relations [Jubien]
13391 Modality concerns relations among platonic properties [Jubien]
11166 The subject of a proposition need not be the source of its necessity [Fine,K]
17273 Each basic modality has its 'own' explanatory relation [Fine,K]
17289 Every necessary truth is grounded in the nature of something [Fine,K]
14530 The role of semantic necessity in semantics is like metaphysical necessity in metaphysics [Fine,K, by Hale/Hoffmann,A]
9216 Each area of enquiry, and its source, has its own distinctive type of necessity [Fine,K]
14531 Rather than define counterfactuals using necessity, maybe necessity is a special case of counterfactuals [Williamson, by Hale/Hoffmann,A]
19282 It seems that we cannot show that modal facts depend on non-modal facts [Hale]
12432 Explanation of necessity must rest on something necessary or something contingent [Hale]
12434 Why is this necessary, and what is necessity in general; why is this necessary truth true, and why necessary? [Hale]
12435 The explanation of a necessity can be by a truth (which may only happen to be a necessary truth) [Hale]
15030 Humeans say that we decide what is necessary [Sider]
15031 Modal terms in English are entirely contextual, with no modality outside the language [Sider]
14101 Are necessary truths rooted in essences, or also in basic grounding laws? [Rosen]
15103 Blackburn fails to show that the necessary cannot be grounded in the contingent [Cameron]
14372 Possible worlds are just not suitable truthmakers for modality [Jacobs]
14549 Maybe truths are necessitated by the facts which are their truthmakers [Mumford/Anjum]