Skip to main content

Monadological contingentism

Williamson defines contingentism as the opposite of necessitism and both as follows:

Call the proposition that is necessary what there is necessitism and its negation contingentism. In a slightly less compressed form, necessitism says that necessarily everything is necessarily something; still more long-windedly, it is necessary that everything is such that it is necessary that something is identical with it. (Modal Logic as Metaphysics, 13 - Oxford UP).

In still other words, necessitism takes existence as necessary while contingentism has that what exists is contingent on something and could be otherwise. Following contingentism, what exists could be dependent on whatever else exists. This is the sort of contingentism a monadological approach (which I would find in Leibniz but also on Tarde, Whitehead, Latour and maybe others) would embrace. In fact, contingentism seems to follow from Leibniz' law - things are what they are necessarily but they don't exist necessarily (the identity of indiscernibles). For Leibniz, Adam has to be a sinner, but nothing forced God create him - this is Leibniz's line against Arnault: Adam is the product of a choice God made, Adam was chosen in virtue of all the other items in the best possible world and given all that, Adam has to be a sinner but he doesn't have to exist. He existed because of a (wisest possible) choice made by God. Spinoza would have that anything exists necessarily, but Leibniz wouldn't. As for Whitehead, contingentism is spoused to no substantiality and yet an actual entity is necessarily the way it is - if it ceases being the way it is, it becomes somthing else. The real essence of an actual entity is understood in terms of all the other actual entities around it, there is nothing in the entity beyond this solidarity and therefore nothing that would make it subsist (qua entity) outside this society of entities. Williamson takes contingentism to claim that ontology - what exists - is contingent. It is through some metaphysical necessity - that what exists is the way it is - that monadologies make sure ontology is contingent.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev
1 comment
Read more

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Meta-m
Post a Comment
Read more

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I
Post a Comment
Read more