necessitation

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noun

Necessity, understood as a logical or other philosophical principle, or as a law or force of nature.

Scrabble 15

Meanings

nounnecessitation (countable and uncountable, plural necessitations)

plural necessitations

  1. countableuncountablehuman sciencesNecessity, understood as a logical or other philosophical principle, or as a law or force of nature.

    Moral obligation is not necessitation. The moral law commands but does not coerce us.

    1894, J. G. Schurman, “The Consciousness of Moral Obligation”, in The Philosophical Review, volume 3, number 6, page 641
    3 more examples

    The voluntary actions of men are now seen to claim an equal freedom from the necessitation of natural causes.

    1896, J. Clark Murray, “The Idealism of Spinoza”, in The Philosophical Review, volume 5, number 5, page 485

    Determinism is an example: it alleges that all the seeming irregularities and spontaneities in the world are haunted by an omnipresent system of strict necessitation.

    1957, J. W. N. Watkins, “Between Analytic and Empirical”, in Philosophy, volume 32, number 121, page 114

    In virtue of their contents, psychological states stand in logical relations like incompatibility, material implication, and conceptual necessitation.

    2001, Eric Marcus, “Mental Causation: Unnaturalized but Not Unnatural”, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, volume 63, number 1, page 79

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

necessitation. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/necessitation

MLA

“necessitation.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/necessitation. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “necessitation,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/necessitation.

Source: necessitation on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.