I agree that the weaker version is easier to accept. But, I do not agree that there are strong arguments against the stronger version.
For something to qualify for some label, whether we care if it exists or not is an optional (to use Putnam's word) lexical choice about litmus criteria for such qualification; what we *consider* essential in some context.
Consider a table. Did it "exist prior to existing"? Obvious contradiction, right? But... surely can we talk about it, prior to it existing? Of course. How? Well, we're just talking about a different thing, a figment of our imagination perhaps, and using very loose qualitative equivalence to treat them as the same thing in relevant respects, and in relevant contexts (e.g., of imagining a table, then building it per our imagination). Per this looser standard, it was "around" in some form prior to being "around" in a concrete way.
But we can also change our optional lexical choices as we see fit. In some contexts, we tie something's identity crucially to its existence. With this narrower standard, we an say it was "not around" prior to being built. Here we'd say it was "something else... the imagination of that table" that was "around."
I'm using "around" to help us dispose of notions of monosemy across these different optional lexica. The more common culprit is, of course, "existent."
The necessitarianism discourse is rife with under-notation and reification. Necessity operators should always be relativized, and this is because which metaphysic/lexicon you want to use is always optional (opt-in/opt-out).
Thank you for commenting. You've raised some very interesting points that I haven't considered before, so I appreciate that. The kind of metaphysic I had in mind whilst writing is the Avicennian one. The necessary operators were used in that context. Moreover, wouldn't you say that intuition is a good guide to rule out the stronger version? I think there are other reasons, but it seems like many philosophers rule out the stronger version based on their intuition.
I find the intuition against necessitarianism to apply just as strongly against WN as SN. The reason I find it highly implausible that the chair I'm sitting in right now is necessary isn't because "Its essence doesn't contain its existence" (a statement which I don't even think is coherent). It's because I can easily imagine a world where the chair never existed (and never will exist), and because it seems insane to say that there is no other way the world could be, period, in which the chair doesn't exist, even when I can easily imagine such ways. That latter statement is equivalent to the chair's being weakly metaphysically necessary. I have never considered the chair's being necessary to imply that it has always existed - obviously if the chair's creation was necessary, the chair was necessary as well. And I find it just as counterintuitive to claim that something that has always existed (like the universe as a whole) is necessary. So I don't think the intuition against the chair's necessity can be chalked up to the observation that the chair hasn't always existed.
Furthermore, I do believe in some restricted versions of the PSR. For example, I believe there are no brute necessities. This seems obvious to me - anyone who claims that something "just is" necessary, with no reason for it being necessary, must not understand what necessity even means. But this restricted PSR (call it the NPSR) means that I can't say that the world as a whole just is necessary (note that by "the world", I mean absolutely everything that exists, not just the physical universe). That would be a brute necessity. If the world really is necessary, there has to be some reason why it literally couldn't be any other way whatsoever. But there could not be such a reason. There's no reason why the world couldn't just have nothing concrete at all in it, for example. The actual world is either a brute necessity or a brute contingency, and the former is absurd, so it must be, contra necessitarianism, a brute contingency.
In the article, you say, "To deny the plausibility of WN is tantamount to denying the implausibility of an effect not obtaining despite the presence of its complete cause." This is not correct on any reading of "complete cause". If it means a sufficient cause, then it's true by definition that an effect must obtain if its complete cause does, and this has nothing to do with WN. If it means, "all the causal factors that influenced the event", then "An effect must obtain if its complete cause does" is just a statement of determinism, which is a much, much weaker claim than WN (and also perfectly plausible to deny).
I agree that the weaker version is easier to accept. But, I do not agree that there are strong arguments against the stronger version.
For something to qualify for some label, whether we care if it exists or not is an optional (to use Putnam's word) lexical choice about litmus criteria for such qualification; what we *consider* essential in some context.
Consider a table. Did it "exist prior to existing"? Obvious contradiction, right? But... surely can we talk about it, prior to it existing? Of course. How? Well, we're just talking about a different thing, a figment of our imagination perhaps, and using very loose qualitative equivalence to treat them as the same thing in relevant respects, and in relevant contexts (e.g., of imagining a table, then building it per our imagination). Per this looser standard, it was "around" in some form prior to being "around" in a concrete way.
But we can also change our optional lexical choices as we see fit. In some contexts, we tie something's identity crucially to its existence. With this narrower standard, we an say it was "not around" prior to being built. Here we'd say it was "something else... the imagination of that table" that was "around."
I'm using "around" to help us dispose of notions of monosemy across these different optional lexica. The more common culprit is, of course, "existent."
The necessitarianism discourse is rife with under-notation and reification. Necessity operators should always be relativized, and this is because which metaphysic/lexicon you want to use is always optional (opt-in/opt-out).
Thank you for commenting. You've raised some very interesting points that I haven't considered before, so I appreciate that. The kind of metaphysic I had in mind whilst writing is the Avicennian one. The necessary operators were used in that context. Moreover, wouldn't you say that intuition is a good guide to rule out the stronger version? I think there are other reasons, but it seems like many philosophers rule out the stronger version based on their intuition.
I find the intuition against necessitarianism to apply just as strongly against WN as SN. The reason I find it highly implausible that the chair I'm sitting in right now is necessary isn't because "Its essence doesn't contain its existence" (a statement which I don't even think is coherent). It's because I can easily imagine a world where the chair never existed (and never will exist), and because it seems insane to say that there is no other way the world could be, period, in which the chair doesn't exist, even when I can easily imagine such ways. That latter statement is equivalent to the chair's being weakly metaphysically necessary. I have never considered the chair's being necessary to imply that it has always existed - obviously if the chair's creation was necessary, the chair was necessary as well. And I find it just as counterintuitive to claim that something that has always existed (like the universe as a whole) is necessary. So I don't think the intuition against the chair's necessity can be chalked up to the observation that the chair hasn't always existed.
Furthermore, I do believe in some restricted versions of the PSR. For example, I believe there are no brute necessities. This seems obvious to me - anyone who claims that something "just is" necessary, with no reason for it being necessary, must not understand what necessity even means. But this restricted PSR (call it the NPSR) means that I can't say that the world as a whole just is necessary (note that by "the world", I mean absolutely everything that exists, not just the physical universe). That would be a brute necessity. If the world really is necessary, there has to be some reason why it literally couldn't be any other way whatsoever. But there could not be such a reason. There's no reason why the world couldn't just have nothing concrete at all in it, for example. The actual world is either a brute necessity or a brute contingency, and the former is absurd, so it must be, contra necessitarianism, a brute contingency.
In the article, you say, "To deny the plausibility of WN is tantamount to denying the implausibility of an effect not obtaining despite the presence of its complete cause." This is not correct on any reading of "complete cause". If it means a sufficient cause, then it's true by definition that an effect must obtain if its complete cause does, and this has nothing to do with WN. If it means, "all the causal factors that influenced the event", then "An effect must obtain if its complete cause does" is just a statement of determinism, which is a much, much weaker claim than WN (and also perfectly plausible to deny).