Necessary Facts

Abstract Analytic truths are necessary but rather insubstantial, given that analytic sentences are true no matter how things are. It is nowadays a commonplace that there are also substantial metaphysical truths the necessity of which derives from things necessarily being one way rather than another. Theoretical identifications and certain suitably conditionalized identity statements count as paradigmatic examples of sentences expressing such necessary facts. Although there is no shortage of attempts to deflate these examples, this paper proposes another deflationary analysis. Based on this analysis, I shall try to defend a perhaps paradoxically sounding thesis: even under the interpretation under which the sentences in question turn out to be necessarily true, they merely state contingent facts.