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Could there have been unicorns?

International Journal of Philosophical Studies 5 (1):35 – 51 (1997)

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From Dispositions to Possible Worlds.Daniel Kodaj - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-20.details Dispositions (powers, potentialities) have become popular in metaphysics in recent years, and some of their proponents are advertising them as the best metaphysical grounds for modality. This project has a logical as well as an ontological side: dispositionalists offer modal and counterfactual semantics that make no use of possible worlds. I argue that, as a result of their counterfactual semantics, dispositionalists are in fact committed to entities that play the same theoretical role as possible worlds. Roughly, the claim is that (...) Download Export citation Bookmark
The Possibility of Unicorns and Modal Logic.Lee Walters - 2014 - Analytic Philosophy 55 (2):295-305.details Michael Dummett argues, against Saul Kripke, that there could have been unicorns. He then claims that this possibility shows that the logic of metaphysical modality is not S5, and, in particular, that the B axiom is false. Dummett’s argument against B, however, is invalid. I show that although there are number of ways to repair Dummett’s argument against B, each requires a controversial metaphysical or semantic commitment, and that, regardless of this, the case against B is undermotivated. Dummett’s case is (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 1 citation
Against mereological nihilism.Jonathan Tallant - 2014 - Synthese 191 (7):1511-1527.details I argue that mereological nihilism fails because it cannot answer the special arrangement question: when is it true that the xs are arranged F-wise? I suggest that the answers given in the literature fail and that the obvious responses that could be made look to undermine the motivations for adopting nihilism in the first place. Download Export citation Bookmark 22 citations
Unicorn Atheism.Roy Sorensen - 2018 - Noûs 52 (2):373-388.details Kripshe treats ‘god’ as an empty natural kind term such as ‘unicorn’. She applies Saul Kripke's fresh views about empty natural kinds to ‘god’. Metaphysically, says Kripshe, there are no possible worlds in which there are gods. Gods could not have existed, given that they do not actually exist and never did. Epistemologically, godlessness is an a posteriori discovery. Kripshe dismisses the gods in the same breath that she dismisses mermaids. Semantically, the perspective Kripshe finds most perspicacious, no counterfactual situation (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 3 citations
Martha Kneale on Why Metaphysical Necessities Are Not A Priori.Jessica Leech - 2019 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (4):389-409.details In her 1938 paper ‘Logical and Metaphysical Necessity’, Martha Kneale introduces the necessarya posteriori. I present a critical summary of Kneale's argument that so-called ‘metaphysical propositions’ are necessary but nota priori. I argue that Kneale is well placed to offer a template for reconciling conceivability approaches to modal epistemology with the post-Kripkean trend for taking metaphysical necessities to have their source in mind-independent reality. Download Export citation Bookmark 7 citations

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