ABSTRACT
This chapter examines and replies to the following objections: 1. Counterfactual conditionals about what might have been are meaningful and true, so there must be at least some contingent entities that they are about. 2. There may be some other types, degrees, or varieties of necessity that are not absolute. 3. If every actual entity is necessary, the depiction of any entity as necessary does not add anything, and modalities are essentially superfluous. The necessitarian may be committed to the claim that there are no modalities, in which case nothing is necessary. 4. Necessitarianism entails some form of monism like: maximal holism, superessentialism, and semantical holism, which is problematic. 5. Whence does necessity come? What makes an entity necessary? And how do we know that something is necessary? 6. If a contingentarian alters their belief toward necessitarianism, doesn’t the future have to be open and not necessitated? And why even make the case for necessitarianism, as, according to the necessitarian, every reader will believe what they do of necessity? 7. And doesn’t the fact that so many philosophers reject necessitarianism work against the necessitarian position?
