Counterfactuals and the Analysis of Necessity

This paper is, in part, a straightforward exercise in philosophical analysis: I will try to define metaphysical necessity. But I will combine this aim with another: I want to know which cognitive practices of ordinary life gave rise to the concept of necessity, and what role the notion plays in these practices. Let me describe this goal in more detail, before giving an overview of my strategy. 1. Goals and overview 1.1 Internal and external perspectives Although the expression ‗metaphysical necessity ‘ is a technical term of analytic philosophy, I think that non-philosophers usually either have an inchoate, implicit grasp of the concept expressed by it, or can at least very easily be gotten to cotton on when the concept is explained to them, even if they are not given an explicit definition. When presenting a highly intelligent person without philosophical background with a carefully designed series of thought experiments, we might get her to say, ―I could not have been born of different parents. A person with different parents would not have been me. ‖ (This is essentially what happened to me a couple of years ago as I conversed with a very intelligent non-philosophe