Necessary Being and Modal Logic

This video introduces necessitism, the view that necessarily everything is necessarily something.

0:00 - Necessitism
9:06 - Non-concrete possible objects?
16:48 - Is necessitism counterintuitive?
23:45 - The Barcan formula
33:28 - Consequences for formal logic
38:06 - From modal logic to metaphysics

[aaronchipp-miller]

Can't wait to hear what my pal Verity and my favorite artist frank zappa have been up to

[osakagrindset]

Babe wake up, new kane b just dropped

[andreasvox]

As a mathematician, I view all formulas that don't state the range of its quantifiers as suspicious.
Or from a model theoretic perspective: there are models where modal logic is valid and there are models where modal logic is invalid, and necessitists and contingentists mix these models up.

[СергейМакеев-жн]

This right here might be a "reductio ad absurdum" to show how broken the idea of "identity across worlds" is.

[rogerwitte]

I think the biggest weakness is the assumption that logic is philosophically neutral. To describe the world and to reason about it we use language. Logic gives us the consequences of our choice of language. But in choosing a language, we may already be making philosophical choices. In effect the choice of 'the strongest classical first order logic' entailing necessitism might be a good reason to consider other logics. Perhaps we should not always use the strongest available logic. Should we be seeking the weakest logic necessary to make our argument go through. I am inspired here by movements in mathematics like constructive mathematics, topos theory and reverse mathematics.

[tudornaconecinii]

I have to say, the arguments presented didn't make me seriously consider either necessitism or contingentism, but they did a decent job of shaking one of my more foundational beliefs ("logic works wherever you are so it can't tell you where you are", as it were).

Thanks for the food for thought.

[funktorial]

really good work presenting a genuinely technically difficult topic, can't imagine this was easy to put together

[RobertElliotPahel-Short]

Laughing in Rust Option<T> type.

[IntegralDeLinha]

Wow! Great video on such a complex matter. Thank you!

[СергейМакеев-жн]

This is the first time I've seen an "actually" operator.
Can you do a video about the arguments for and against using this operator?

[HerrEinzige]

Would Kane’s channel even exist if not for me liking and commenting on every video?

[MalkuthEmperor]

Well f me, i was a necessitist without knowing 😂
Love this!

[martinbennett]

What puzzles me is the lack of distinction between a conditional mode that refers to the future and conditional modes that refer to the present (including the past). Whilst necessitism may apply to the former, the latter is necessarily contingent (on the past).

[gabri]

I am kinda of an extreme necessitist. I believe the universe is both deterministic, and it's natural laws couldn't be otherwise. I believe if you change, for instance, the speed of light in vacuum, some other underlying law of physics would enter in contradiction, so the speed of light can't be changed. Same for all other constants. So i believe the universe is necessary and the only possible world.

[BLUYES]

i wonder what can be derived mixing this idea with complexity theory. interesting framework of thought

[isaacbarratt]

I struggle to understand the disagreement between the necessitist and those who argue 'things' could have been otherwise: both agree that there exists the 'real' and 'hypothetical'.

Being that a coin is a hypothetical but a piece of metal is a 'real' thing I dont understand what the dispute is: 'real' things can have hypothetical significance. This seems self evident.

Is the concept of currency real? No: it is something we innovated, and the 'value' attached to 'real' things based on this hypothetical is relative (could be otherwise).

Congratulations:
1. It is true that the hypothetical could be otherwise (this is what it means to have a hypothetical)
2. it is true that what 'is' is not hypothetical, and if it is real it 'ought' not be otherwise (necessity)
3. what is there to dispute: that things could have been otherwise or that something could become nothing? Do these people not protesteth too much? Why should I care about hypotheticals? I care only about what 'is'.

Hypothetically I might consider how to make my life conditions better: but unless a hypothetical has an application it becomes useless to me even to consider. How is it useful to think that what 'is' 'ought' be otherwise? The contingentists who argue against necessity seem pugnacious to me (eg. not helpful at all: not useful at all: they offer me no solutions to my existential problem). The contingentist trivialises existence. What 'is' could be otherwise: they think about how things could be otherwise only because they loath what 'is'? Do these people hate life: only the person who distains or has contempt for life would prefer an 'ought' proposition over an 'is'.

[joecotter]

Which goes to show that Modal Logic is a lot of bunk.(WVO Quine).
Round and round we go with word lasagne, layer and layer of verbiage topped off with a good dollop of word salad cream.
Give up on this. Wilkinson might not have existed and his book wouldn't have been published and we would all have been better off. You will go mad if you go on like this and end up like Chalmers in a simulation spiralling up your own arse in an infinite regress.
'All possible coins are coins'. Read it. Examine. 'All possible coins are not coins'. Take your pick. Whatever answer you pick results in precisely nothing.
Pack it in. Do some philosophy. This is friendly advice. You are very talented but wasting your time in this ludicrous venture.
I am a possible Patreon subscriber, send a link please. Not a link to a payment page but a link to your content.

[MoleyMoleo]

If someone is a Necessetarian (perhaps for reasons of hard determinism and the like), does that allows them to afirm the Barton Formula, and otherwise also keep classical logic, without believing in these objects of mere possibility?
i.e. everything is necesarrily something, and that something is precisely the thing that it is, no more and no less?

[GottfriedLeibnizYT]

"Necessitism is the view that necessarily everything is necessarily something". Sounds like essentialism, I guess.

[Masonova]

I don't know how to tell the difference between a merely possible coin and a merely possible paperclip. It seems like all or most of the predicates before a coin's actuality are shared with those of a paperclip's. So how are possible objects identical to themselves? I worry that this is done by assuming the trivial solution -- every possible object is identical to every other one, modulo their predicates for actuality, and thus has no truly distinct form.