Abstract
The very last of words of Naming and Necessity are ‘The third lecture suggests that a good deal of what contemporary philosophy regards as mere physical necessity is actually necessary tout court. The question how far this can be pushed is one I leave for further work.’ Kripke (1980). To my knowledge he never conducted that further work; moreover, no one following him has wished to take up the baton either. Herein, I argue that in general, physical necessity is neither reducible to, nor implies, tout court necessity. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that even if Kripke’s speculations are restricted to a subset of the physical necessities where it might be granted that all such are necessary tout court, physical necessity is still not reducible to tout court necessity.
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Notes
Kripke also refers to ‘necessity tout court’ as ‘necessity in the highest degree’ and even as metaphysical necessity’. I also refer to this form of necessity as ‘Kripkean necessity’ to clearly mark the fact that Kripke's notion of necessity is distinct from other notions of metaphysical necessity such as where something is metaphysically necessary where its negation is inconceivable.
Famously, according to Kripke, possible worlds are stipulated not discovered.
This, in the parlance of the trade, is still called a theoretical identification even though not all electrical discharges are ashes of lightning.
References
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Masterton, G. Physical Necessity is Not Necessity Tout Court . Int Ontology Metaphysics 13, 175–182 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-012-0101-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-012-0101-2