Stalnaker I 201
Metaphysics/Episteme/Kripke/Stalnaker: the separation of metaphysical and epistemological distinctions made it possible to agree with the empiricists that substantial truths about the world are knowable only on the basis of empirical evidence, while one allows at the same time nontrivial metaphysical truths about the essential nature of the things.
Kripke/Stalnaker: it remains controversial, what Kripke actually showed.
Kripke/Alan Sidelle/Jackson/Chalmers/Stalnaker: (Sidelle 1989
(1), Jackson 1998
(2), Chalmers 1996
(3)) Thesis: Kripke's theses can be reconciled with this,...
I 202
...that all necessity has its root in language and our ideas. However, in a more complex way than empiricism assumed.
>
Necessity, >
Necessity de re.
Then there is no irreducible necessity a posteriori.
Necessary a posteriori: is then divisible into necessary truth which is knowable a priori by conceptual analysis, and a part that is only a posteriori knowable, but this is contingent. Chalmers and Jackson show this with two-dimensional semantics.
>
Necessity a posteriori, >
Two-dimensional semantics.
I 203
Metaphysics/metaphysical laws/logic/analysis/Stalnaker: conceptual analysis and deduction (logic) are sufficient to show what is conceptually necessary. But they cannot reveal any metaphysical laws that exclude possibilities that are conceptually coherent, but metaphysically impossible.
Metaphysical possibility/Jackson/Chalmers: ditto, no different terms of necessity (Jackson 1998
(2), 67-84, Chalmers 1996
(3), 136-8).
I 204
Metaphysical necessity/Jackson/Chalmers/Kripke/Lewis/Stalnaker: metaphysical necessity is therefore necessity in the broadest sense.
E.g. It is not exactly the case that there are no metaphysical laws that might have excluded gold from being something else, but if there are such metaphysical laws, there is no such possibility for them to exclude it. Namely, in the light of empirical facts.
>
Facts.
1. Alan Sidelle. [1989] Necessity, Essence, and Individuation: A Defense of Conventionalism. Cornell University Press
2. Frank Jackson [1998a]: From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
3. David J. Chalmers [1996]: The Conscious Mind. New York: Oxford University Press
