THERE ARE BRUTE NECESSITIES Export

@article{Whittle09, abstract = {A necessarily true sentence is 'brute' if it does not rigidly refer to anything and if it cannot be reduced to a logical truth. The question of whether there are brute necessities is an extremely natural one. Cian Dorr has recently argued for far-reaching metaphysical claims on the basis of the principle that there are no brute necessities: he initially argued that there are no non-symmetric relations, and later that there are no abstract objects at all. I argue that there are nominalistically acceptable brute necessities, and that Dorr's arguments thus fail. My argument is an application of G\"{o}del's first incompleteness theorem.}, address = {Corpus Christi College, Oxford}, author = {Whittle, Bruno}, citeulike-article-id = {5299196}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2009.595.x}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/122505347/ABSTRACT}, doi = {10.1111/j.1467-9213.2009.595.x}, issn = {1467-9213}, journal = {The Philosophical Quarterly}, keywords = {modality}, number = {9999}, posted-at = {2009-07-29 18:39:26}, priority = {2}, title = {THERE ARE BRUTE NECESSITIES}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2009.595.x}, volume = {9999}, year = {2009} }

TY - JOUR ID - Whittle09 L3 - citeulike-article-id:5299196 N2 - A necessarily true sentence is 'brute' if it does not rigidly refer to anything and if it cannot be reduced to a logical truth. The question of whether there are brute necessities is an extremely natural one. Cian Dorr has recently argued for far-reaching metaphysical claims on the basis of the principle that there are no brute necessities: he initially argued that there are no non-symmetric relations, and later that there are no abstract objects at all. I argue that there are nominalistically acceptable brute necessities, and that Dorr's arguments thus fail. My argument is an application of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. IS - 9999 JF - The Philosophical Quarterly SN - 1467-9213 AD - Corpus Christi College, Oxford TI - THERE ARE BRUTE NECESSITIES VL - 9999 KW - modality AU - Whittle, Bruno PY - 2009/// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2009.595.x ER -