必然性と反事実的条件文

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to clarify the epistemological and ontological status of natural or physical necessity. For this purpose, I first examine the thoughts of Hume and Kant in brief, and then the opinions of this century's analytic philosophers help my argument to proceed. Though Hume and Kant are fundamentally different in important points, both hold a same point of view in common with regard to the problem of natural necessity; speaking roughly, both think that necessity is something there is on the side of perceiving subjects rather than on the side of nature perceived. I don't get into line with these two. I want to approach the problem of natural necessity realistically. Then it serves my approach to seek after the meaning and the function of counterfactual conditionals after due consideration of their relation to laws of nature. We can assert counterfactual conditionals only of the kind supported by laws of nature. The connections of antecedents and consequents of such counterfactual conditionals are nonaccidental in a certain specific way different from material or strict implict implication. I propose these very connections correspond to and are appearance of real necessity as properties of things themselves, and that we can not know but only conjecture the reality of such necessity.