Lexicon of Arguments

 

Schwarz I 27
Metaphysics/being/essential/van InwagenVsLewis/StalnakerVsLewis: knowing about contingent facts about the current situation would in principle not be sufficient to know all a posteriori necessities:
Def strong necessity/Chalmers: thesis: in addition to substantial contingent truths, there are also substantial modal truths: e.g. that Kripke is essentially a human being, e.g. that pain is essentially identical to XY.
>Necessity, >a posteriori necessity, >necessity de re.
Important argument: knowledge of contingent facts is not sufficient to recognize these modal facts. How do we recognize them, perhaps we cannot do this (van Inwagen 1998)⁽¹⁾ or only hypothetically through methodological considerations (Block/Stalnaker 1999)⁽²⁾.
A posteriori necessity/metaphysics/Lewis/Schwarz: normal cases are not cases of strong necessity. You can learn e.g. that Blair is premier or e.g. that the evening star corresponds to the morning star.
LewisVsInwagen/LewisVsStalnaker: other cases (which cannot be empirically found) do not exist.
LewisVsStrong Necessity: strong necessity has no place in his modal logic.
>LewisVsTelescope Theory: worlds are not like distant planets of which one can learn which ones exist.
>Possible worlds.


1. Peter van Inwagen [1998]: “Modal Epistemology”. Philosophical Studies, 92: 67–84.
2. Ned Block und Robert Stalnaker [1999]: “Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the Explanatory Gap”. The Philosophical Review, 108: 1–46.