Contingentism and paraphrase
One important challenge for contingentists is that they seem to be unable to account for the meaning of some apparently meaningful modal discourse that is perfectly intelligible for necessitists. This worry is particularly pressing for higher-order contingentists, contingentists who hold that it is...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Springer Science and Business Media LLC
2024
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/153547 |
| _version_ | 1811083761505271808 |
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| author | Werner, Jonas |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Werner, Jonas |
| author_sort | Werner, Jonas |
| collection | MIT |
| description | One important challenge for contingentists is that they seem to be unable to account for the meaning of some apparently meaningful modal discourse that is perfectly intelligible for necessitists. This worry is particularly pressing for higher-order contingentists, contingentists who hold that it is not only contingent which objects there are, but also contingent which semantic values there are for higher-order variables to quantify over. Objections against higher-order contingentism along these lines have been presented in Williamson (Mind 119(475):657–748, 2010; Modal logic as metaphysics, Oxford University Press, 2013, ch. 7), and Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017). This paper presents a way for contingentists to respond to these challenges. The upshot is that the contingentist can account for the meaningfulness of the problematic modal claims by pretending necessitism to be true, but in some cases it turns out to be indeterminate whether they are true. I defend this strategy against the objections against pretence-strategies presented in Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017, §4). Furthermore, I defend the plausibility of the resulting indeterminacy from the contingentist’s perspective. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:38:39Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/153547 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:38:39Z |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1535472024-09-20T18:40:44Z Contingentism and paraphrase Werner, Jonas Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Philosophy One important challenge for contingentists is that they seem to be unable to account for the meaning of some apparently meaningful modal discourse that is perfectly intelligible for necessitists. This worry is particularly pressing for higher-order contingentists, contingentists who hold that it is not only contingent which objects there are, but also contingent which semantic values there are for higher-order variables to quantify over. Objections against higher-order contingentism along these lines have been presented in Williamson (Mind 119(475):657–748, 2010; Modal logic as metaphysics, Oxford University Press, 2013, ch. 7), and Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017). This paper presents a way for contingentists to respond to these challenges. The upshot is that the contingentist can account for the meaningfulness of the problematic modal claims by pretending necessitism to be true, but in some cases it turns out to be indeterminate whether they are true. I defend this strategy against the objections against pretence-strategies presented in Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017, §4). Furthermore, I defend the plausibility of the resulting indeterminacy from the contingentist’s perspective. 2024-02-21T16:07:32Z 2024-02-21T16:07:32Z 2024-02-14 2024-02-18T04:12:29Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0031-8116 1573-0883 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/153547 Werner, J. Contingentism and paraphrase. Philos Stud (2024). en 10.1007/s11098-024-02106-w Creative Commons Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The Author(s) application/pdf Springer Science and Business Media LLC Springer Netherlands |
| spellingShingle | Philosophy Werner, Jonas Contingentism and paraphrase |
| title | Contingentism and paraphrase |
| title_full | Contingentism and paraphrase |
| title_fullStr | Contingentism and paraphrase |
| title_full_unstemmed | Contingentism and paraphrase |
| title_short | Contingentism and paraphrase |
| title_sort | contingentism and paraphrase |
| topic | Philosophy |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/153547 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT wernerjonas contingentismandparaphrase |