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    Made withinDC&Austin
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Metaphysical modal entailment is insufficient as a criterion for ontological commitment because ontological commitment is sensitive to distinctions that metaphysical necessity cannot accommodate.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Ontological commitment appears to be sensitive to fine-grained distinctions between what a theory commits one to.
      ?

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    • 2.Metaphysical necessity is too coarse-grained to track these distinctions (e.g., it cannot distinguish triangular polygons from trilateral polygons, or relevant from irrelevant necessary existents).
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Quine's criterion ties ontological commitment to the bound variables of a theory's canonical notation, not to what is necessarily co-extensional with those variables.
      ?

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    • 2.Two theories can share all metaphysical necessities yet differ in their bound variables, meaning modal entailment cannot substitute for the syntactic criterion Quine identifies.
      ?

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    • 3.If modal entailment sufficed, number theory and set theory would share identical commitments wherever their objects are necessarily interdefinable, which contradicts standard ontological practice.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Fine's work on essence shows that metaphysical necessity is grounded in essence, but essence is object-specific: Socrates essentially belongs to {Socrates}, yet {Socrates} does not essentially contain Socrates.
      ?

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    • 2.Ontological commitment tracks what a theory's truth genuinely requires the existence of, and this requirement is sensitive to asymmetric essential dependencies that necessity, being symmetric, cannot capture.
      ?

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    • 3.Because necessary co-existence does not imply mutual ontological dependence, a criterion based on metaphysical entailment systematically conflates genuinely required posits with merely co-necessary but explanatorily idle ones.
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