Instrumentalism in Mapping between Contingentism and Necessitism
Williamson has advocated for necessitism over contingentism, arguing that even for neutral expressions, i.e. modal formulations consistent with either hypothesis, necessitism is more expressive in the standard semantics for (second-order) quantified modal logic. Fritz has formalized and refined this claim in the context of generalized quantifiers: he argues that this distinction in expressibility hinges on the quantifer. Here Lauro will introduce an alternative semantics formulated by Antonelli, characterize Fritz's argument in these new terms, and by re-examining his equivalence theorem, demonstrate that the standard semantics are crucial to obtaining Williamson's result. Hence it follows that one cannot be instrumentalist regarding the semantics in modal ontology.
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