A Critical Appraisal of the Concept of Necessity and Necessarily True Proposition
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/S27X9Keywords:
Contingent, Necessity, Proposition, Possible Worlds, Truth, Necessarily TruthAbstract
The popular notion that truth is an essential element of knowledge has triggered inquiries into the nature of truth and propositions that can qualify as being true. In investigating truth as a quintessential element of knowledge, scholars and thinkers have arrived at diverse notions of truth, manifesting unique characteristics that typify them. One of those notions of truth is the concept of necessity and the necessarily true proposition. It entrenches the perspective that truth is absolute, and its negation, impossible. It holds that statements, realities, and occurrences could not have been contrary to the way that they were posed, presented, or spoken of. This paper thus seeks to explicate the concept of necessity as a necessarily true proposition. By examining the grounds that either corroborate or falsify the notion that truth is alike in all possible worlds, we showed the problem inherent in the idea of analytic truth as juxtaposed to synthetic truth, which is often considered the basis of our idea of necessary truth. However, in spite of the positivists’ and Quine’s critiques of analyticity and, by extension, the concept of necessity, we argued that without certain forms of necessity, at least hypothetically, our idea of knowledge will be threatened.
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