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  1. Non-Descriptivism About Modality. A Brief History And Revival.Amie Thomasson - 2008 - The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 4:8.
    Despite the otherwise-dominant trends towards physicalism and naturalism in philosophy, it has become increasingly common for metaphysicians to accept the existence either of modal facts and properties, or of Lewisian possible worlds. This paper raises the historical question: why did these heavyweight realist views come into prominence? The answer is that they have arisen in response to the demand to find truthmakers for our modal statements. But this demand presupposes that modal statements are descriptive claims in need of truthmakers. This (...)
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  • Possible Worlds.Christopher Menzel - 2013 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    This article includes a basic overview of possible world semantics and a relatively comprehensive overview of three central philosophical conceptions of possible worlds: Concretism (represented chiefly by Lewis), Abstractionism (represented chiefly by Plantinga), and Combinatorialism (represented chiefly by Armstrong).
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  • Modality and Anti-Metaphysics.Stephen K. McLeod - 2001 - Aldershot: Ashgate.
    Modality and Anti-Metaphysics critically examines the most prominent approaches to modality among analytic philosophers in the twentieth century, including essentialism. Defending both the project of metaphysics and the essentialist position that metaphysical modality is conceptually and ontologically primitive, Stephen McLeod argues that the logical positivists did not succeed in banishing metaphysical modality from their own theoretical apparatus and he offers an original defence of metaphysics against their advocacy of its elimination. -/- Seeking to assuage the sceptical worries which underlie modal (...)
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  • (1 other version)Gómez-Torrente on Modality and Tarskian Logical Consequence.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2003 - Theoria 18 (2):159-170.
    Gómez-Torrente’s papers have made important contributions to vindicate Tarski’s model-theoretic account of the logical properties in the face of Etchemendy’s criticisms. However, at some points his vindication depends on interpreting the Tarskian account as purportedly modally deflationary, i.e., as not intended to capture the intuitive modal element in the logical properties, that logical consequence is (epistemic or alethic) necessary truth-preservation. Here it is argued that the views expressed in Tarski’s seminal work do not support this modally deflationary interpretation, even if (...)
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  • Real impossible worlds : the bounds of possibility.Ira Georgia Kiourti - 2010 - Dissertation, University of St Andrews
    Lewisian Genuine Realism about possible worlds is often deemed unable to accommodate impossible worlds and reap the benefits that these bestow to rival theories. This thesis explores two alternative extensions of GR into the terrain of impossible worlds. It is divided in six chapters. Chapter I outlines Lewis’ theory, the motivations for impossible worlds, and the central problem that such worlds present for GR: How can GR even understand the notion of an impossible world, given Lewis’ reductive theoretical framework? Since (...)
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  • The Grounds of Necessity.Ross P. Cameron - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (4):348-358.
    Some truths are necessary, others could have been false. Why? What is the source of the distinction between the necessary and the contingent? What's so special about the necessary truths that account for their necessity? In this article, we look at some of the most promising accounts of the grounds of necessity: David Lewis' reduction of necessity to truth at all possible worlds; Kit Fine's reduction of necessity to essence; and accounts of necessity that take the distinction between the necessary (...)
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  • Reductive theories of modality.Theodore Sider - 2003 - In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 180-208.
    Logic begins but does not end with the study of truth and falsity. Within truth there are the modes of truth, ways of being true: necessary truth and contingent truth. When a proposition is true, we may ask whether it could have been false. If so, then it is contingently true. If not, then it is necessarily true; it must be true; it could not have been false. Falsity has modes as well: a false proposition that could not have been (...)
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  • Possible-worlds semantics without possible worlds: The agnostic approach.John Divers - 2006 - Mind 115 (458):187-226.
    If a possible-worlds semantic theory for modal logics is pure, then the assertion of the theory, taken at face-value, can bring no commitment to the existence of a plurality of possible worlds (genuine or ersatz). But if we consider an applied theory (an application of the pure theory) in which the elements of the models are required to be possible worlds, then assertion of such a theory, taken at face-value, does appear to bring commitment to the existence of a plurality (...)
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  • Functionalism about possible worlds.Dominic Gregory - 2006 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (1):95 – 115.
    Various writers have proposed that the notion of a possible world is a functional concept, yet very little has been done to develop that proposal. This paper explores a particular functionalist account of possible worlds, according to which pluralities of possible worlds are the bases for structures which provide occupants for the roles which analyse our ordinary modal concepts. It argues that the resulting position meets some of the stringent constraints which philosophers have placed upon accounts of possible worlds, while (...)
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  • Recombination and intrinsicality.Ross P. Cameron - 2008 - Ratio 21 (1):1–12.
    In this paper I argue that warrant for Lewis ' principle of recombination presupposes warrant for a combinatorial analysis of intrinsicality, which in turn presupposes warrant for the principle of recombination. This, I claim, leads to a vicious circularity: warrant for neither doctrine can get off the ground.
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  • A Case for Necessitarianism by Amy Karofsky (Routledge, 2021). ISBN 9781032026169. [REVIEW]Samuel Kimpton-Nye - 2024 - Philosophy 99 (1):132-137.
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  • (Once again) Lewis on the analysis of modality.John Divers & Jade Fletcher - 2020 - Synthese 197 (11):4645-4668.
    We propose a novel interpretation of Lewis on the analysis of modality that is constructed from primary sources, comprehensive and unprecedented. Our guiding precepts are to distinguish semantics from metaphysics, while respecting the inter-relations between them, and to discern whatever may be special, semantically or metaphysically, about the modal case. Following detailed presentation, we amplify and advocate our interpretation by providing a conforming genealogy of Lewis’s theory of modality and applying it to construct a detailed and newly illuminating version of (...)
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  • (1 other version)Gómez-Torrente on Modality and Tarskian Logical Consequence.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2010 - Theoria 18 (2):159-170.
    Gómez-Torrente’s papers have made important contributions to vindicate Tarski’s model-theoretic account of the logical properties in the face of Etchemendy’s criticisms. However, at some points his vindication depends on interpreting the Tarskian account as purportedly modally deflationary, i.e., as not intended to capture the intuitive modal element in the logical properties, that logical consequence is (epistemic or alethic) necessary truth-preservation. Here it is argued that the views expressed in Tarski’s seminal work do not support this modally deflationary interpretation, even if (...)
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  • An Empiricist's Guide to Objective Modality.Jenann Ismael - 2017 - In Matthew H. Slater & Zanja Yudell (eds.), Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science: New Essays. New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 109-125.
    In this paper, I defend an empiricist account of modality that keeps a substantive account of modal commitment, but throws out the metaphysics. I suggest that if we pair a deflationary attitude toward representation with a substantive account of how scientific models are constructed and put to use, the result is an account that deflates the metaphysics of modal commitment without deflating the content of modal claims.
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  • O Princípio de Verdade (Ensaio de Reconstrução Filosófica da Teoria Aristotélica da Verdade).Nazareno Eduardo de Almeida - 2005 - Dissertation, Pontificia Universidade Católica de Porto Alegre (Pucrs), Brazil
    A tese central deste trabalho consiste em reconstruir em bases filosóficas as linhas gerais da teoria aristotélica da verdade mostrando, a partir da análise do Livro IV da Metafísica, que esta teoria está fundada naquilo que é chamado nesta investigação de princípio transcendental de verdade, o qual é constituído pela bi- implicação modal dos princípios de não-contradição, do terceiro excluído e de identidade.
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  • Against Lewisian Modal Realism from a Metaontological Point of View.Tora Koyama - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (3):1207-1225.
    Modal realism is an ontological position made familiar by David Lewis, according to which there exist possible worlds other than the actual world that we inhabit. It is hard to uphold modal realism, and indeed modal realism has only a few advocates. However, as most contemporary metaphysicians agree, this does not mean that it is easy to refute modal realism. In this paper, I argue against modal realism from a metaontological point of view. First, I provide a precise formulation of (...)
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  • Modalism and theoretical virtues: toward an epistemology of modality.Otávio Bueno & Scott A. Shalkowski - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (3):671-689.
    According to modalism, modality is primitive. In this paper, we examine the implications of this view for modal epistemology, and articulate a modalist account of modal knowledge. First, we discuss a theoretical utility argument used by David Lewis in support of his claim that there is a plurality of concrete worlds. We reject this argument, and show how to dispense with possible worlds altogether. We proceed to account for modal knowledge in modalist terms.
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  • Primitive worlds.Takashi Yagisawa - 2002 - Acta Analytica 17 (1):19-37.
    Modal Dimensionalism is a metaphysical theory about possible worlds that is naturally suggested by the often-noted parallelism between modal logic and tense logic. It says that the universe spreads out not only in spatiotemporal dimensions but also in a modal dimension. It regards worlds as nothing more or less than indices in the modal dimension in the way analogous to the way in which Temporal Dimensionalism regards temporal points and intervals as indices in the temporal dimension. Despite its naturalness and (...)
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  • Metaphysics of Ersatzism about Possible Worlds.Lenart Karol - 2023 - Dissertation, Jagiellonian University
    According to actualism about possible worlds everything that exists is actual. Possible worlds and individuals are actually existing abstract parts of the actual world. Aristotelian actualism is a view that there are only actual individuals but no possible ones, nor their individual abstract representatives. Because of that, our actualist account of modality should differ depending on whether it concerns actual individuals or possible ones. The main goal of the dissertation is to develop a metaphysical framework for Aristotelian actualism. Chapter 1 (...)
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  • The methodology of genuine modal realism.Chris John Daly - 2008 - Synthese 162 (1):37-52.
    David Lewis’s genuine modal realism is a controversial thesis in modal metaphysics. Charles Chihara and Ross Cameron have each argued that Lewis’s defence of his thesis involves his committing serious methodological errors; in particular, that his replies to two well-known and important objections are question-begging. Scott Shalkowski has further argued that Lewis’s attempt to analyse modal talk in non-modal terms is viciously circular. This paper considers the methodology which Lewis uses to argue for his thesis, and the paper tries to (...)
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  • Blackburn’s Rejection of Modals.Scott Shalkowski - 2008 - Philosophia Scientiae 12 (1):93-106.
    Dans cet article je présente le dilemme de Simon Blackburn pour les théories vériconditionnelles de la modalité, et je discute de ses limitations. Je discute la nature de circularité conceptuelle et argumentative, j’argumente que la circularité conceptuelle ne s’applique pas à toutes les théories vériconditionnelles de la modalité et que, de plus, la circularité argumentative ne s’applique pas. Il n’y a rien d’erroné, en principe, avec les théories de la modalité en termes non modaux, mais les questions épistémologiques présentes sont (...)
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  • Worlds and Individuals, Possible and Otherwise.R. Cameron - 2010 - Analysis 70 (4):783-792.
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  • The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism, by Alastair Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xi + 219. [REVIEW]John Divers - forthcoming - Mind.
    _ The Nature of Contingency _: _ Quantum Physics as Modal Realism _, by AlastairWilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xi + 219.
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  • Logical Constants: A Modalist Approach 1.Otávio Bueno & Scott A. Shalkowski - 2013 - Noûs 47 (1):1-24.
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  • The Epistemology of Modality.Pablo Rychter & Ezequiel Zerbudis - 2023 - Disputatio 15 (69):135-150.
    We describe the main issue debated at the IV Blasco Disputatio: whether our knowledge of metaphysical possibility and necessity rests on knowledge of essence. But before getting to this specific issue, we offer a broader introduction to the more general problems in the epistemology of modality. In this way, we establish a background against which the contributions to this SI can be better appreciated.
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  • The laws of modality.Matthew Tugby - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (8):2597-2618.
    Nomic realists have traditionally put laws to work within a theory of natural modality, in order to provide a metaphysical source for causal necessitation, counterfactuals, and dispositions. However, laws are well-suited to perform other work as well. Necessitation is a widespread phenomenon and includes cases of categorial, conceptual, grounding, mathematical and normative necessitation. A permissive theory of universals allows us to extend nomic realism into these other domains. With a particular focus on grounding necessitation, it is argued that the sorts (...)
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  • VIII*—The Analysis of Possibility and the Possibility of Analysis.John Divers - 1997 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 97 (1):141-160.
    John Divers; VIII*—The Analysis of Possibility and the Possibility of Analysis, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 97, Issue 1, 1 June 1997, Pages.
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  • De-mystieylng situations.B. H. Slater - 1997 - Philosophical Papers 26 (2):165-178.
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  • (1 other version)Has Lewis reduced modality?Javier Kalhat - 2008 - European Journal of Philosophy 17 (4):504-526.
    Building on the pioneer work of Lycan (1988, 1991a and b, 1994) and Yagisawa (1988), this paper aims to set out in a comprehensive way the case for the view that Lewis' analyses of modality in terms of quantification over worlds and counterparts fail to be genuinely reductive. This involves bringing together elements of the case which have hitherto remained unconnected, motivating some of those elements in new and more decisive ways, and bolstering them by considering a range of objections (...)
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  • (1 other version)Possibility. By Michael Jubien. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xv + 202.Amy Karofsky - 2011 - Metaphilosophy 42 (5):723-733.
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  • Essential Properties - Analysis and Extension.Nathan Wildman - 2011 - Dissertation, Cambridge
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