Sources of Necessity

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Thomas Sattig; Dr. Tobias Wilsch
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy ; Practical Philosophy
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 394341335

The central goal of the proposed project is to develop the intuitive notion of a source of necessity to gain new insights into traditional issues within the metaphysics of modality. We start from the pluralistic assumption that there are different kinds of necessity, and that those kinds have different sources. For instance, laws of nature are the source of natural necessity, essences the source metaphysical necessity, and logical consequence is the source of logical necessity.We will develop an analysis of the notion of source in the first part of the project, and we will use this analysis to provide a systematic account of the grounding of necessity-facts in their sources. This account also aims to explain which sources exert which kinds of necessity and the ways in which the sources exert their associated kinds of necessity.In the second part of the project, we will focus on the relationship between sources of necessity and the notion of explanation. The starting point of this section is the claim that every source of necessity also establishes explanations and that each ground of explanation is also a source of necessity. We will defend this connection between necessity and explanation and we will use different sources to characterise causal and non-causal kinds of explanation.In the third part of the project, we will use the notion of source to investigate commonalities and differences between descriptive and normative necessity. Descriptive kinds of necessity are exerted by descriptive sources, such as the laws of nature and essence, whereas normative kinds of necessity are exerted by normative phenomena, like the laws of morality or rationality. We will argue that normative and descriptive necessity are two species of the same genus, which differ in the specific way in which they are exerted by their sources.We intend to develop a new conceptual framework and an original position within the metaphysics of modality. We will also critically discuss a range of traditional positions in that area. The application of the notion of source to laws of nature and normativity, moreover, will allow us to build bridges between metaphysics, meta-ethics, and philosophy of science.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants