ABSTRACT
Various arguments in support of necessitarianism are provided. First, because there is nothing that can provide for contingency, contingentarianism is false and necessitarianism is true. Second, because contingent entities can be neither autonomous nor substantive, no existing entity is a contingency, and every existing entity is necessary. Third, because there is no good reason to rule out any property of an object as nonessential, what a particular object is is just all the ways that it is, and every property is necessary. Fourth, because any contra-actual description of an actual entity will render a contradiction, no contra-actual describes a possible entity. Fifth, if anything is contingent, then everything is contingent, therefore, nothing can be contingent. Sixth, there can be no effective criterion that can distinguish contingent entities from necessary entities, thus, there can be no such distinction, and because it cannot be the case that everything is contingent, it must be the case that everything is necessary. Seventh, the application of Ockham’s Razor and the principle of simplicity indicates that necessitarianism is a better theory than contingentarianism. And eighth, because necessitarianism captures the way that things really are, only necessitarianism provides a factual and correct account of the universe.
