Consequences of Necessitism

Abstract

Necessitism underpins an elegant metaphysical view on which the play of contingency and change occurs within a non-contingent, unchanging structural framework. Contingentists sometimes charge necessitists with denying a plausible claim of the supervenience of the modal on the non-modal. However, there is no good reason to endorse the supervenience claim in the form incompatible with necessitism. Another controversial consequence of necessitism is that contingent truths lack truthmakers. However, the relevant truthmaker principle depends on an unjustified metaphysical privileging of first-order over higher-order quantification. Given the many implausible consequences of that truthmaker principle, its rejection is a benefit of necessitism. Finally, although some necessitists may assign explanatory priority to an extensional metalanguage with quantification over possible worlds and no modal operators, doing so commits them to rejecting radical contingency, a commitment too far. While permitting such quantification, necessitists should give priority to some modal operators, if not the expected ones.