Weak necessity and truth theories

(2) Socrates is a man are semantic, and not merely syntactic, constituents of (1); someone who does not understand that name or that predicate does not understand (1). In this respect (1) differs from the metalinguistic “Socrates is a man” is a necessary truth in English. (b) Intuitively, also, (1) results from the application of a sentential operator “necessarily” to (2) at least somewhat as Socrates is not a man results from the application of sentential negation to (2). (c) What is more and this has sometimes seemed to conflict with the second intuition the position of “Socrates” in (1) is referentially transparent. If Cicero is necessarily a man is true, and “Cicero” denotes the very same object as does “Tully”, then Tully is necessarily a man is true. There is a sharp contrast here with the position of “Socrates” in, for example, Fred believes that Socrates is a man. (d) Finally, when a speaker uses (1) to make an essentialist claim whether it is true or false he does not thereby deny that the people who