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    The Linsky-Zalta-Williamson position that necessarily eve... — Carmelics
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    Perspectives
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    Home/Personal Identity
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    The Linsky-Zalta-Williamson position that necessarily everything necessarily exists is only as plausible as its explanation of the intuitive contingency of ordinary objects.

    Modality & PossibilityPersonal Identity
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Ordinary objects like Bush intuitively seem to exist contingently.
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    • 2.If being and existence are necessary properties, this intuition must be explained away rather than taken at face value.
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    • 3.A position that cannot account for strong intuitions about contingency is weakened to the extent of that failure.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Williamson's necessitism explains contingency intuitions via a distinction between being a concrete human and merely existing as an abstract individual.
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    • 2.The intuition that Bush 'might not have existed' is fully accommodated as the truth that Bush might have been non-concrete, not non-existent.
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    • 3.A position that successfully reinterprets an intuition in terms of a nearby, well-defined distinction has not failed to account for it but has deepened our understanding of it.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The plausibility of a metaphysical position is not solely determined by its alignment with pre-theoretic intuitions, as Kripke himself showed intuitions can be systematically revised by rigorous modal semantics.
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    • 2.Necessitism gains independent support from the logical advantages of constant-domain quantified modal logic, including the validity of the Barcan formula and avoidance of possibilist ontology.
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    • 3.When a thesis earns support from multiple independent theoretical virtues, its plausibility cannot be reduced to the success of any single explanatory task.
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    Connections

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    Truth & Knowledge2 linked

    Related

    A position that cannot account for strong intuitions about contingency is weaken...A position that successfully reinterprets an intuition in terms of a nearby, wel...If being and existence are necessary properties, this intuition must be explaine...Necessitism gains independent support from the logical advantages of constant-do...
    +5 moreShow less
    Ordinary objects like Bush intuitively seem to exist contingently.The intuition that Bush 'might not have existed' is fully accommodated as the tr...The plausibility of a metaphysical position is not solely determined by its alig...When a thesis earns support from multiple independent theoretical virtues, its p...Williamson's necessitism explains contingency intuitions via a distinction betwe...

    Similar

    Therefore, establishing that God's existence is not impossible is suff...83%If singular propositions exist and actualism is true, then necessarily...83%If the nonexistence of everything is impossible, then necessarily some...83%If God's existence is possible, it follows necessarily that God exists...82%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: propositions-singular
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    Matters are more difficult if one is an actualist, subscribing to the thesis that absolutely everything is actual. Then, if one accepts the existence of singular propositions, one has two options. First, one might deny that propositions like (7) are possibly true, accepting that necessarily everything necessarily exists, as Bernard Linsky and Edward Zalta, in their (1994) and Timothy Williamson, in his (2001), do. This position is only as plausible as the explanation on offer of the intuitive co
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit