Modal Matters – Page 10 – Maverick Philosopher

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2nd ed., p. 299, Rand speaking:

What do you mean by "necessity"? By "necessity," we mean that things are a certain way and had to be. I would maintain that the statement "Things are," when referring to non-man-made occurrences, is the synonym of "They had to be." Because unless we start with the premise of an arbitrary God who creates nature, what is had to be. We have to drop any mystical premise and keep the full context in mind. Then, aside from human action, what things are is what they had to be.

The alternative of what "had to be" versus "what didn't have to be" doesn't apply metaphysically. It applies only to the realm of human action and human choice."

First of all, 'Things are' and 'Things had to be' cannot be synonyms since they obviously have different meanings as anyone who understands English knows. But let's be charitable. What Rand is trying to say is that every non-man-made occurrence is such that 'had to be' applies to it, and every man-made occurrence is such that 'did not have to be' applies to it. Charitably construed, she is not making a false semantic point, but two modal points. The first is that nothing non-man-made is contingent or, equivalently, that everything non-man-made is necessary. The second modal point is that the man-made is contingent. I will discuss only the first modal point. It is not obvious and is denied by many philosophers both theists and atheists. So it is legitimate to demand an argument for the thesis.

Continue reading “Ayn Rand on Necessity, Contingency, and Dispositions”

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Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology includes an essay by Leonard Peikoff entitled "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy." The section "Necessity and Contingency" concludes with the following paragraph:

Truth is the identification of a fact with reality. Whether the fact in question is metaphysical or man-made, the fact determines the truth: if the fact exists, there is no alternative in regard to what is true. For instance, the fact that the U.S. has 50 states was not metaphysically necessary – but as long as this is men's choice, the proposition that "The U.S. has 50 states" is necessarily true. A true proposition must describe the facts as they are. In this sense, a "necessary truth" is a redundancy, and a "contingent truth" a self-contradiction. (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2nd ed., eds. Binswanger and Peikoff, NAL Books, 1990, p. 111, emphasis in original.)

I have no objection to part of what is being said in this passage, in fact I heartily agree with it, namely, that facts determine truths. The non-man-made fact of the moon's having craters makes-true the proposition expressed by 'The moon has craters.' And similarly for the man-made fact regarding the 50 states cited by Peikoff. So I cheerfully agree that "if the fact exists, there is no alternative in regard to what is true." We can put the point as follows given that there is a fact F and a proposition p that records F:

Continue reading “Modal Confusion in Rand/Peikoff”