Propositional Dependence and Perspectival Shift

Abstract

A popular view in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of language represents each singular proposition as ontologically dependent upon the individual it is directly about. This chapter examines the significance of that idea for debates in higher-order metaphysics concerning the modal status of propositional existence and nonexistence. The dependence idea is routinely invoked as a premise in arguments for propositional contingentism, the view that it is a contingent matter what propositions exist. Much of the attractiveness of the view derives from the intuitive observation that, e.g., a possibility in which Socrates does not exist is ipso facto a possibility in which the singular proposition that Socrates is wise does not exist. Propositional necessitism is the denial of propositional contingentism.