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Article 5141 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Apr17.195101.11242@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 17 Apr 92 23:51:00 GMT
References: <1992Apr17.142040.11231@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Apr17.202258.20091@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Apr17.211851.18106@sophia.smith.edu>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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In article <1992Apr17.211851.18106@sophia.smith.edu>
orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes: 

>In article <1992Apr17.202258.20091@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> 
>chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

DC:
> >Personally, I find bizarre the idea that such blatantly contingent
> >facts as the law of gravity or the mass of an electron could be
> >metaphysically necessary.  

JOR:
>This is an interesting point to me, and I would like to know where
>Kripke discusses it.  I couldn't find it in Naming & Necessity, but
>I haven't read that cover-to-cover since I passed the age of reason :-).
>It seems what is or is not contingent depends on the status of
>accepted physics.  Isn't it possible that the law of gravity must
>hold in any existent universe, that it follows inexorably from the
>existence of *any* matter?  Of course we don't (yet?) know this is
>the case, but it seems that contingency is a function of advances in
>physics, which are a function of time.  So contingency is really
>contingency(t).

Physical necessity, [sic] _might_ turn out to be necessity in the highest
degree.  But that's a question which I don't wish to prejudge.  At least
for this sort of example [heat = the motion of molecules], it might be that
when something's physically necessary, it always is necessary _tout court_.

"Naming and Necessity", p.99.

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: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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