Psychology Dictionary of Arguments

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Necessity, philosophy: different kinds of necessity are distinguished, differing in their strength. For example, physical, logical or metaphysical necessity. See also necessity de dicto, necessity de re.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

John Bigelow on Necessity - Dictionary of Arguments

I 105
Necessity/essential/Bigelow/Pargetter: For example, suppose you have to travel within 24h from Melbourne to London. There are different necessities, e.g. to reach a telephone or others, which can be psychological, causal, etc.
Possibility: is also ambiguous. For example, today it is physically impossible to get from Melbourne to London in 10 minutes, but perhaps not always.
I 106
Necessary/possible/Bigelow/Pargetter: we can alternatively interpret them as "always" and "sometimes".
I 224
Natural Laws/Relative Necessity/Bigelow/Pargetter: Assuming we now label a set of A of sentences as natural laws, we also denote a set of C of possible worlds where these laws are true.
Nomically necessary: then we can say that each sentence is nomically necessary iff it is true in all possible worlds of C.
Nomic necessity/Bigelow/Pargetter: is thus explained in terms of entailment by laws.
>Entailment
.
Natural Laws/Bigelow/Pargetter: Question: How do we pick out the set A of the sentences that are considered to be natural laws? That depends of course on the way the world is.
>Natural laws.
What is considered a natural law can be different from world to world. It can only be contingently true in one world, or false in another.
>Possible Worlds, >Possible Worlds/Bigelow.
For example, there are worlds in which Aristotle's law (see above) applies.
Then there is a set to every world w
Aw of sentences that are laws in w. That determines a set of
Cw, of world whose events coincide with the laws in w.
I 225
Nomically necessary: is then when sentence p, iff it is true in all worlds in Cw - in all worlds that are compatible with the laws in w.
>Entailment.
Nomic necessity: Natural laws.
I 227
Natural necessity/Lewis/Bigelow/Pargetter: should be explained in terms of laws and not vice versa.
I 238
Natural necessity/Bigelow/Pargetter: is not definable by law. It is what makes laws laws!

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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.

Big I
J. Bigelow, R. Pargetter
Science and Necessity Cambridge 1990


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