| Abstract [eng] |
In the sixties and seventies, Saul Kripke developed possible world semantics, thus making modal metaphysics an active field of inquiry in analytic philosophy. One of the main disputes in contemporary analytic modal metaphysics is the controversy of necessitism and contingentism, which is the main subject of this master thesis. The focal question of this controversy is whether individuals exist contingently or necessarily. In this thesis, we first present the semantics of quantified modal logic in some detail and then we explicate arguments for and against contingentism. On the one hand, the contingency of individuals is endorsed by common sense worldview. On the other, accepting contingentism raises a host of theoretical problems, chiefly among them: classical objections in the context of model theory and proof theory, the problem of unexemplified essences, the problem of adequate comprehension schema; also valid deductive arguments which support necessitism are problematic for contingentists. In this thesis, we develop and defend a new theory of moderate contingentism – Fundamental Essentialism, according to which, individuals are realized essences. After introducing this alternative metaphysics of contingent individuals, we present a correlatively alternative interpretation of possible world semantics and a new formalization of necessitism and contingentism. We then prove that fundamental essentialism allows one to answer all arguments against contingentism. Finally, we explicate other existing theories of contingentism and necessitism, discuss their respective drawbacks, and after comparing them with the theory defended in this thesis, we claim that fundamental essentialism betters them. |
