Do modal statements about necessity express essential properties of the entities they name or are they merely descriptions of properties entities logically possess under a specific context?
Woops meant this for >>>/lit/
In english chief
>>217076580I meant this for /lit/ but I'll entertain you.Suppose we were given the proposition "9 is necessarily a composite number". Now we know that the number of planets in the solar system is 9, seeing that I now choose to substitute the number 9 with a name, let's call it "the number of planets in the solar system". I now find myself with the proposition "the number of planets in the solar system is necessarily a composite number". This seems to create difficulties, because when read de re it would suggest that the number of planets in the solar system could never be any different than it is, that it MUST have the essential property of being composite. But this seems to go against our intuition that the number of planets in the solar system is a contingent fact, not a necessary fact. So can we really say that the number 9 has the essential feature of being a composite number? Or does it entirely depend on context and how we name things?
>>217077327none of this shit matters, philosophy like this so removed from the human condition or applicable to real problems is the equivalent of astrophysicists saying "THERE'S A STAR MADE OF OIL!!! LOOK!!!!"
>>217077384Bro, I just want to have a consistent metaphysics that is in accords with the actual ontology of the world. How else can I arrive at the true nature of reality?
>>217077327Aren't those two completelly different things, though? 9 is a composed number because it is composed of other numbersThe number of planets is composed by planets
>>217078691The point is how do we distinguish descriptions from essences? Are "essences" really just covert ways of talking about descriptions? Is it best to reject reading modal statements de re in favor of de dicto readings of them? Reading them de re seems to commit one to essentialism, but essentialism comes with problems. Yet the essentialist might argue that descriptivist conclusions about such sentences do not follow.
