Manifesting belief in absolute necessity |
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Authors: | John Divers Daniel Y Elstein |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK |
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Abstract: | McFetridge (in Logical necessity and other essays. London: Blackwell, 1990) suggests that to treat a proposition as logically necessary—to believe a proposition logically necessary, and to manifest
that belief—is a matter of preparedness to deploy that proposition as a premise in reasoning from any supposition. We consider
whether a suggestion in that spirit can be generalized to cover all cases of absolute necessity, both logical and non-logical,
and we conclude that it can. In Sect. 2, we explain the significance that such an account of manifestation of belief in absolute necessity has for the prospects
of a non-realist theory of modality. In Sect. 3, we offer a sympathetic articulation of the detail that underlies the McFetridge conception of belief in logical necessity.
In Sects. 4 and 5, we show that the conception so articulated will not generalize to encompass all cases of belief in absolute necessity and
proceed to offer a remedy. Our proposal is based upon a distinction between two kinds of suppositional act: A-supposing and
C-supposing (Sect. 6). In Sect. 7, we then explain and defend our central thesis: (roughly) that (manifestation of) belief in absolute necessity is a matter
of preparedness to deploy as a premise in reasoning under any C-supposition. Finally, we indicate that there is some promise
in the parallel thesis that manifestation of the treatment of a proposition as a priori is a matter of preparedness to deploy
as a premise in reasoning under any A-supposition (Sect. 8). |
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