Abstract

Contingentists hold that it is contingent what there is. Higher-order contingentists hold that it is contingent what propositions, properties and relations there are, when talk of such entities is regimented using higher-order quantifiers. Previous explorations of contingentism have for the most part assumed that having a property or standing in a relation requires at least possibly being something. However, there are good reasons to question this assumption.

This paper explores a version of contingentism which rejects it. Doing so allows the contingentist to express generality with respect to what there is, what there could be, and what there could not be. This allows them to overcome some of the pressing problems for contingentism, including certain expressive power challenges. However, this form of generality gives rise to a new challenge concerning the metasemantics quantification. The contingentist cannot count generalizing with respect to what there is, what there could be, and what there could not be as a form of quantification. It is not clear how to motivate such a position.