Abstract :
This paper defends (especially in response to Brian Leftow’s recentattack) logical nominalism, the thesis that logically necessary truth belongs primarilyto sentences and depends solely on the conventions of human language. A sentenceis logically necessary (that is, a priori metaphysically necessary) iff its negationentails a contradiction. A sentence is a posteriori metaphysically necessary iff itreduces to a logical necessity when we substitute for rigid designators of objects orproperties canonical descriptions of the essential properties of those objects orproperties. The truth-conditions of necessary sentences are not to be found in anytranscendent reality, such as God’s thoughts. ‘There is a God’ is neither a priori nora posteriori metaphysically necessary; God is necessary in the sense thatHis existence is not causally contingent on anything else
