What reason is there to suppose that time limited necessity is a coherent concept and could obtain? This essay has argued that Armstrong’s view of necessity as contingent does not imply Beebee’s view of necessity as potentially terminable once it has been brought into existence. It has been shown that the example of Everest and K2, offered to portray a similarity between a change in the relation of taller-than and the relation of necessity, does not portray a philosophically meaningful similarity. Whereas the taller-than relation is that of logical ordering internal to a single universal, necessity is a contingent relation between two different universals. As long as there are heights at all, they are in the same logical relation to each other – the example has not shown that or how a relation can be changed.
Furthermore, the notion of time as a confounding factor requires a substantial reinterpretation of time. How can t3 but not t2 or t1 interfere if it is not the case that time has properties that differentiate each instant of time from every other instant of time? In addition, such properties must be repeated and maintained Universally, since on Armstrong’s account confounding factors only exert influence on particulars in its proximity, only as long as the factors last. Perhaps such theory of time could be devised, perhaps it could even be coherent, but there is little reason to suppose that such theory is relevant to the actual world. Accordingly it must be concluded that temporal necessity as defined by Beebee does not pose a difficulty for necessitarianism.
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