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Single Idea 9201

[filed under theme 10. Modality / A. Necessity / 11. Denial of Necessity ]

Full Idea

Quine's metaphysical argument is that if 9 is 7+2 the number 9 will be necessarily greater than 7, but when 9 is described as the number of planets, the number will not be necessarily greater than 7. The necessity depends on how it is described.

Gist of Idea

Whether 9 is necessarily greater than 7 depends on how '9' is described

Source

report of Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953]) by Kit Fine - Intro to 'Modality and Tense' p. 3

Book Ref

Fine,Kit: 'Modality and Tense' [OUP 2005], p.3

A Reaction

Thus necessity would be entirely 'de dicto' and not 'de re'. It sounds like a feeble argument. If I describe the law of identity (a=a) as 'my least favourite logical principle', that won't make it contingent. Describe 9, or refer to it? See Idea 9203.

Related Idea

Idea 9203 We can't quantify in modal contexts, because the modality depends on descriptions, not objects [Quine, by Fine,K]

The 20 ideas with the same theme [there is nothing necessary about the real world]:

4766 Necessity only exists in the mind, and not in objects [Hume]
7186 There are no necessary truths, but something must be held to be true [Nietzsche]
4528 For me, a priori 'truths' are just provisional assumptions [Nietzsche]
9362 Necessary truths are those we will maintain no matter what [Lewis,CI]
8483 Necessity is relative to context; it is what is assumed in an inquiry [Quine]
10924 Necessity is in the way in which we say things, and not things themselves [Quine]
8206 Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia [Quine]
4577 There is no necessity higher than natural necessity, and that is just regularity [Quine]
9201 Whether 9 is necessarily greater than 7 depends on how '9' is described [Quine, by Fine,K]
10927 Necessity only applies to objects if they are distinctively specified [Quine]
15090 Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction undermined necessary truths [Quine, by Shoemaker]
4718 If necessity is always relative to a description in a language, then there is only 'de dicto' necessity [Putnam, by O'Grady]
14919 Empiricists deny what is unobservable, and reject objective modality [Fraassen]
19284 Asserting a necessity just expresses our inability to imagine it is false [Blackburn]
20475 Maybe modal sentences cannot be true or false [Casullo]
11119 De re necessity is just de dicto necessity about object-essences [Jubien]
3888 Hume assumes that necessity can only be de dicto, not de re [Scruton]
9200 Empiricists suspect modal notions: either it happens or it doesn't; it is just regularities. [Fine,K]
14589 A modal can reverse meaning if the context is seen differently, so maybe context is all? [Hawthorne]
14598 Abstracta imply non-logical brute necessities, so only nominalists can deny such things [Dorr]