One important challenge for contingentists is that they seem to be unable to account for the meaning of some apparently meaningful modal discourse that is perfectly intelligible for necessitists. This worry is particularly pressing for higher-order contingentists, contingentists who hold that it is not only contingent which objects there are, but also contingent which semantic values there are for higher-order variables to quantify over. Objections against higher-order contingentism along these lines have been presented in Williamson (Mind 119(475):657–748, 2010; Modal logic as metaphysics, Oxford University Press, 2013, ch. 7), and Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017). This paper presents a way for contingentists to respond to these challenges. The upshot is that the contingentist can account for the meaningfulness of the problematic modal claims by pretending necessitism to be true, but in some cases it turns out to be indeterminate whether they are true. I defend this strategy against the objections against pretence-strategies presented in Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017, §4). Furthermore, I defend the plausibility of the resulting indeterminacy from the contingentist’s perspective.

偶然论者面临的一个重要挑战是，他们似乎无法解释某些显然有意义的模态话语的含义，而这些话语对于必然论者来说是完全可以理解的。这种担忧对于高阶偶然论者来说尤其紧迫，他们认为，不仅存在哪些对象是偶然的，而且高阶变量要量化的语义值也是偶然的。 Williamson (Mind 119(475):657–748, 2010; Modallogic as metaphysicals, Oxford University Press, 2013, ch. 7) 以及 Fritz 和 Goodman (Mind 126) 中提出了沿着这些思路反对高阶偶然论的反对意见。 （504）：1063–1108，2017）。本文为应急人员提供了应对这些挑战的方法。结果是，偶然论者可以通过假装必然论为真来解释有问题的模态主张的意义，但在某些情况下，结果是不确定它们是否为真。我为这一策略辩护，反对弗里茨和古德曼（Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017, §4）中提出的假装策略的反对意见。此外，我从偶然论者的角度捍卫由此产生的不确定性的合理性。