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  1. Against S5: Impossible Worlds in the Logic of What Might Have Been.Nathan Salmon - manuscript
    The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted in related installments (previously published and unpublished essays).
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  • The Nature and Structure of Space.Gregory Fowler - 2009 - Dissertation, University of Rochester
    In my dissertation, I address a variety of issues in the metaphysics of space and related areas. I begin by discussing the popular thesis that regions of space are identical to sets of points in space. I present three arguments against this thesis and conclude that we should be skeptical of it. In its place, I propose an axiomatic theory of regions of space that is consistent with both reductive accounts of their nature and with accounts that treat them as (...)
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  • Modal Paradox.Teresa Robertson Ishii - 2014 - In Jonathan Berg (ed.), Naming, Necessity and More: Explorations in the Philosophical Work of Saul Kripke. London and New York: Palgrave. pp. 54-80.
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  • Everything but the kitchen sink: how (not) to give a plenitudinarian solution to the paradox of flexible origin essentialism.Teresa Robertson Ishii - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (1):133-161.
    I explore options for a plenitudinarian solution to the Paradox of Flexible Origin Essentialism, taking as my unlikely starting point the views of Sarah-Jane Leslie, who holds that if plenitudinarianism is true, then there is in fact no paradox to be solved, only the illusion of one. The first three sections are expository: Sect. 1 on plenitudinarianism, Sect. 2 on the paradox, and Sect. 3 on Leslie’s views about how plenitudinarianism bears on the paradox. In Sect. 4, I reject the (...)
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  • Why God allows undeserved horrendous evil.Scott Hill - 2022 - Religious Studies 58 (4):772-786.
    I defend a new version of the non-identity theodicy. After presenting the theodicy, I reply to a series of objections. I then argue that my approach improves upon similar approaches in the literature.
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  • Modal Paradox II: Essence and Coherence.Nathan Salmón - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (10):3237-3250.
    Paradoxes of nested modality, like Chisholm’s paradox, rely on S4 or something stronger as the propositional logic of metaphysical modality. Sarah-Jane Leslie’s objection to the resolution of Chisholm’s paradox by means of rejection of S4 modal logic is investigated. A modal notion of essence congenial to Leslie’s objection is clarified. An argument is presented in support of Leslie’s crucial but unsupported assertion that, on pain of inconsistency, an object’s essence is the same in every possible world. A fallacy in the (...)
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  • Two morals about a modal paradox.Alexander Roberts - 2020 - Synthese 198 (10):9873-9896.
    Chisholm’s paradox serves as an important constraint on our modal theorising. For example, one lesson of the paradox is that widely accepted essentialist theses appear incompatible with metaphysical necessity obeying a logic that includes S4. However, this article cautions against treating Chisholm’s paradox in isolation, as a single line of reasoning. To this end, the article outlines two crucial morals about Chisholm’s paradox which situate the paradox within a broad family of paradoxes. Each moral places significant constraints on the paradox’s (...)
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  • A Response to Chisholm’s Paradox.Andrew Dennis Bassford - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (4):1137-1155.
    Essentialists suppose that for every individual, if that individual exists at any possible world, then necessarily that individual exemplifies some non-trivial qualitative property essential to it, as such. Anti-essentialists deny this. One important argument leveled by some anti-essentialists against essentialism takes the form of a thought experiment, one originally introduced by Roderick Chisholm, sometimes referred to as Chisholm's Paradox (CP). In this essay, I defend essentialism against CP. I begin by presenting the argument and showing how it leads to a (...)
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  • Existentialism entails anti-haecceitism.Kenneth Boyce - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (2):297-326.
    Existentialism concerning singular propositions is the thesis that singular propositions ontologically depend on the individuals they are directly about in such a way that necessarily, those propositions exist only if the individuals they are directly about exist. Haecceitism is the thesis that what non-qualitative facts there are fails to supervene on what purely qualitative facts there are. I argue that existentialism concerning singular propositions entails the denial of haecceitism and that this entailment has interesting implications for debates concerning the philosophy (...)
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  • Essence, plenitude, and paradox.Sarah-Jane Leslie - 2011 - Philosophical Perspectives 25 (1):277-296.
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  • The Necessity of Origin: A Long and Winding Route.Roberta Ballarin - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (2):353-370.
    In the last 30 years much philosophical discussion has been generated by Kripke’s proof of the necessity of origin for material objects presented in footnote 56 of ‘Naming and Necessity’. I consider the two most popular reconstructions of Kripke’s argument: one appealing to the necessary sufficiency of origin, and the other employing a strong independence principle allegedly derived from the necessary local nature of prevention. I argue that, to achieve a general result, both reconstructions presuppose an implicit Humean atomistic thesis (...)
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  • Essential vs. Accidental Properties.Teresa Robertson & Philip Atkins - 2013 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The distinction between essential versus accidental properties has been characterized in various ways, but it is currently most commonly understood in modal terms: an essential property of an object is a property that it must have, while an accidental property of an object is one that it happens to have but that it could lack. Let’s call this the basic modal characterization, where a modal characterization of a notion is one that explains the notion in terms of necessity/possibility. In the (...)
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  • Conventionalism and the contingency of conventions.Alan Sidelle - 2009 - Noûs 43 (2):224-241.
    One common objection to Conventionalism about modality is that since it is contingent what our conventions are, the modal facts themselves will thereby be contingent. A standard reply is that Conventionalists can accept this, if they reject the S4 axiom, that what is possibly possible is possible. I first argue that this reply is inadequate, but then continue to argue that it is not needed, because the Conventionalist need not concede that the contingency of our conventions has any bearing on (...)
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  • (1 other version)Essays in the metaphysics of modality.Alvin Plantinga & Matthew Davidson - 1969 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Matthew Davidson.
    Perhaps no one has done more in the last 30 years to advance thinking in the metaphysics of modality than has Alvin Plantinga. Collected here are some of his most important essays on this influential subject. Dating back from the late 1960's to the present, they chronicle the development of Plantinga's thoughts about some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics: what is the nature of abstract objects like possible worlds, properties, propositions, and such phenomena? Are there possible but non-actual (...)
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  • Physical-object ontology, verbal disputes, and common sense.Eli Hirsch - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1):67–97.
    Two main claims are defended in this paper: first, that typical disputes in the literature about the ontology of physical objects are merely verbal; second, that the proper way to resolve these disputes is by appealing to common sense or ordinary language. A verbal dispute is characterized not in terms of private idiolects, but in terms of different linguistic communities representing different positions. If we imagine a community that makes Chisholm's mereological essentialist assertions, and another community that makes Lewis's four-dimensionalist (...)
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  • Transworld identity.Penelope Mackie - forthcoming - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • All the World’s a Stage.Theodore Sider - 1996 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (3):433 – 453.
    Some philosophers believe that everyday objects are 4-dimensional spacetime worms, that a person (for example) persists through time by having temporal parts, or stages, at each moment of her existence. None of these stages is identical to the person herself; rather, she is the aggregate of all her temporal parts.1 Others accept “three dimensionalism”, rejecting stages in favor of the notion that persons “endure”, or are “wholly present” throughout their lives.2 I aim to defend an apparently radical third view: not (...)
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  • The Logic of What Might Have Been.Nathan Salmon - 1989 - Philosophical Review 98 (1):3-34.
    The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted. The author exposes fallacies in standard arguments supporting S5, arguing that propositional metaphysical modal logic is weaker even than both S4 and B, and is instead the minimal and weak metaphysical-modal logic T.
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  • In defense of essentialism.L. A. Paul - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1):333–372.
    If an object has a property essentially, it has that property in every possible world according to which it exists.2 If an object has a property accidentally, it does not have that property in every possible world according to which it exists. Claims about an object’s essential or accidental properties are de re modal claims, and essential and accidental properties are de re modal properties. Take an object’s modal profile to specify its essential properties and the range of its accidental (...)
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  • Is the Macro Grounded in the Micro?Martin Glazier - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1):105-116.
    Let a priority micro pluralist be someone who holds that particles or other microscopic objects are fundamental. Rivals to priority micro pluralism include priority monism (the view that the only fundamental concrete object is the entire cosmos) as well as the Aristotelian view that some ordinary macroscopic objects are fundamental. Although priority micro pluralism is popular, I show that it encounters great difficulty in even the most straightforward cases. For example, this tennis ball is spherical; how is this fact to (...)
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  • The Extraordinary Impossibility of Sherlock Holmes.Ben Caplan - 2016 - Res Philosophica 93 (2):335-355.
    In an addendum to Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke argues against his earlier view that Sherlock Holmes is a possible person. In this paper, I suggest a nonstandard interpretation of the addendum. A key feature of this non-standard interpretation is that it attempts to make sense of why Kripke would be rejecting the view that Sherlock Holmes is a possible person without asserting that it is not the case that Sherlock Holmes is a possible person.
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  • Reducing reductionism: on a putative proof for Extreme Haecceitism.Troy Thomas Catterson - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 140 (2):149-159.
    Nathan Salmon, in his paper Trans-World Identification and Stipulation (1996) purports to give a proof for the claim that facts concerning trans-world identity cannot be conceptually reduced to general facts. He calls this claim ‘Extreme Haecceitism.’ I argue that his proof is fallacious. However, I also contend that the analysis and ultimate rejection of his proof clarifies the fundamental issues that are at stake in the debate between the reductionist and haecceitist solutions to the problem of trans-world identity. These issues (...)
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  • Identity eliminated.Harold W. Noonan - 2007 - Analysis 67 (2):122-127.
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  • (1 other version)Counterparts and identity.Robert Stalnaker - 1986 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11 (1):121--40.
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  • Another look at Armstrong's combinatorialism.Theodore Sider - 2005 - Noûs 39 (4):679–695.
    The core idea of David Armstrong’s combinatorial theory of possibility is attractive. Rearrangement is the key to modality; possible worlds result from scrambling bits and pieces of other possible worlds. Yet I encounter great difficulty when trying to formulate the theory rigorously, and my best attempts are vulnerable to counterexamples. The Leibnizian biconditionals relate possibility and necessity to possible world and true in.
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  • Michael Jubien, ontology, modality, and the fallacy of reference. [REVIEW]Theodore Sider - 1999 - Noûs 33 (2):284–294.
    Michael Jubien’s Ontology, Modality, and the Fallacy of Reference is an interesting and lively discussion of those three topics. In ontology, Jubien defends, to a first approximation, a Quinean conception: a world of objects that may be arbitrarily sliced or summed. Slicing yields temporal parts; summing yields aggregates, or fusions. Jubien is very unQuinean in his explicit Platonism regarding properties and propositions, but concerns about abstracta are peripheral to much of the argumentation in the book.1 His version of the doctrine (...)
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  • Haecceitism.Sam Cowling - 2015 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • This Side of Paradox.Nathan Salmon - 1993 - Philosophical Topics 21 (2):187-197.
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  • Ways an actualist might be.Robert Stalnaker - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 133 (3):455-471.
    I discuss Stalnaker’s views on modality. In particular, his views on actualism, anti-essentialism, counterpart theory, and the Barcan formulas.
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  • Space, Supervenence and Entailment.Sophie C. Gibb - 2006 - Philosophical Papers 35 (2):171-184.
    Le Poidevin has recently presented an argument that gives rise to a serious problem for relationist theories of space. It appeals to the simple geometrical fact that if A, B and C are three points lying in a straight line, then AB and BC together entail AC. He suggests that an ontological relationship of supervenience must be appealed to to explain this entailment. Given this thesis of supervenience, relationism is implausible. I argue that the problem that Le Poidevin raises for (...)
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  • Global supervenience and identity across times and worlds.Theodore Sider - 1999 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (4):913-937.
    The existence and importance of supervenience principles for identity across times and worlds have been noted, but insufficient attention has been paid to their precise nature. Such attention is repaid with philosophical dividends. The issues in the formulation of the supervenience principles are two. The first involves the relevant variety of supervenience: that variety is global, but there are in fact two versions of global supervenience that must be distinguished. The second involves the subject matter: the names “identity over time” (...)
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  • Les intuitions rationnelles sont-elles des intuitions modales?Pierre Saint-Germier - 2017 - Philosophiques 44 (1):49-71.
    Pierre Saint-Germier | : Nous discutons la thèse, acceptée par de nombreux théoriciens des intuitions rationnelles, selon laquelle ces dernières s’accompagnent d’une apparence de nécessité. L’existence d’intuitions rationnelles ayant pour objet des propositions contingentes jette un doute sur l’adéquation de cette thèse. Le problème peut trouver une solution dans le cadre d’une théorie faillibiliste des intuitions rationnelles, pourvu que l’on admette des illusions modales inéliminables. En nous appuyant sur une explication bidimensionnelle de l’a priori contingent, nous défendons une solution différente (...)
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  • Explanation and Modality: On the Contingency Horn of Blackburn’s Dilemma.Vittorio Morato - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (2):327-349.
    Can we explain why some propositions are necessary? Blackburn (Fact, science, and value. Blackwell, Oxford, 1987) has presented a dilemma aimed at showing that the necessity of a proposition cannot be explained either in the case where the explanans is another necessary proposition (necessity horn) or in the case where the explanans is a contingent proposition (contingency horn). Blackburn’s dilemma is intended to show that necessary truth is an explanatorily irreducible kind of truth: there is nothing that explains why propositions (...)
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  • Conceivability arguments for haecceitism.Sam Cowling - 2017 - Synthese 194 (10):4171-4190.
    According to haecceitism, some maximal possibilities differ even while they are qualitatively indiscernible. Since haecceitism is a modal thesis, it is typically defended by appeal to conceivability arguments. These arguments require us to conceive of qualitatively indiscernible possibilities that differ only with respect to the identity of the individuals involved. This paper examines a series of conceivability arguments for haecceitism and a variety of anti-haecceitist responses. It concludes that there is no irresistible conceivability argument for haecceitism even while anti-haecceitist responses (...)
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  • A puzzle about persistence.John W. Carroll & Lee Wentz - 2003 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (3):323-342.
    Our topic is the ontology and persistence conditions of material objects. One widely held doctrine is that identity-over-time has causal commitments. Another is that identity-over-time is just identity as it relates one object that exists at two times. We believe that a tension exists between these two apparently sensible positions: very roughly, if identity is the primary conceptual component of identity-over-time and—as is plausible—identity is noncausal, then the conceptual origins of the causal commitments of identity-over-time become a mystery. We will (...)
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  • The problem of material origins.David Barnett - 2005 - Noûs 39 (3):529–540.
    Saul Kripke has convinced many of us that material things have their material origins essentially. Plutarch, through his Ship of Theseus story, has convinced many of us that material things can sometimes survive gradual replacements of their material parts, that they are materially nonrigid. By way of a series of counterexamples, I will argue that any attempt to specify what in particular is essential about material origins will founder on the phenomenon of material non-rigidity.
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  • Ontology, quantification, and fundamentality.Jason Theodore Turner - unknown
    The structuralist conception of metaphysics holds that it aims to uncover the ultimate structure of reality and explain how the world's richness and variety are accounted for by that ultimate structure. On this conception, metaphysicians produce fundamental theories, the primitive, undefined expressions of which are supposed to 'carve reality at its joints', as it were. On this conception, ontological questions are understood as questions about what there is, where the existential quantifier 'there is' has a fundamental, joint-carving interpretation. Structuralist orthodoxy (...)
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  • The transience of possibility.Reina Hayaki - 2005 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 1 (2):25-36.
    The standard view of metaphysical necessity is that it is truth in all possible worlds, and therefore that the correct modal logic for metaphysical necessity is S5, in models of which all worlds are accessible from each other. I argue that S5 cannot be the correct logic for metaphysical necessity because accessibility is not symmetric: there are possible worlds that are accessible from ours but from which our world is not accessible. There are (or could be) some individuals who, if (...)
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  • Identity and the Facts of the Matter.Graeme Forbes - 2010 - In Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and clouds: vagueness, its nature, and its logic. New York: Oxford University Press.
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