It ain’t necessarily so
It’s true that 1 = 1. Indeed, not only is it true that 1 = 1; it’s necessarily true that 1 = 1. It couldn’t have been otherwise, in the strongest sense of “couldn’t.” The doctrine of necessitarianism says that every truth is necessarily true, just like the truth that 1 = 1. This includes the truth concerning exactly how many times you blinked yesterday.
Determinism says that the truth concerning your exact number of blinks yesterday was necessitated by prior conditions that go back forever. Nevertheless, determinism says that this truth is only contingently true: it could have been otherwise if the prior conditions had been otherwise, which they could have been. I might never have written this post. Suppose I hadn’t. Then the prior conditions going back forever would have been different ‒ so different, in the remote past, that humans almost certainly wouldn’t have arisen to do any writing or blinking at all. According to determinism, neither my writing, nor your blinking, nor the existence of humans is in the same league as 1 = 1.
I think that necessitarianism is a fatally flawed doctrine that we have no good reason to accept. The point of this post is to emphasize that determinism doesn’t imply or support necessitarianism. You can accept determinism without having to regard the exact number of times you blinked yesterday as a necessary truth on a par with 1 = 1. For determinists, plenty of things are so that ain’t necessarily so.
