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Possible worlds

Noûs 10 (1):65-75 (1976)

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  1. Pragmatism, Idealism, and the Modal Menace: Rorty, Brandom, and Truths about Photons.Paul Redding - 2014 - The European Legacy 19 (2):174-186.
    In a short exchange published in 2000, Richard Rorty and Robert Brandom differed over the status of “facts” in a world containing no speakers and, hence, no speech acts. While Brandom wanted to retain the meaningfulness of talk of “facts” or “truths” about things—in this case truths about photons —in a world in which there could be no claimings about such things, Rorty denied the existence of any such “worldly items” as “facts.” In this essay the difference between Rorty and (...)
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  • Findlay’s Hegel: Idealism as Modal Actualism.Paul Redding - 2017 - Critical Horizons 18 (4):359-377.
    Here, I suggest a hitherto relatively unexplored way beyond the opposed Aristotelian realist and Kantian idealist approaches that divide recent interpretations of the categories or “thought determinations” of Hegel’s Logic, by locating his idealism within the terrain of recent debates in modal metaphysics. In particular, I return to the outlook of the first philosopher to attempt to bring Hegel into the analytic conversation, John Niemeyer Findlay, and consider Hegel’s idealism as instantiating the metaphysical position that, following the work of Findlay’s (...)
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  • Descartes Defended.Christopher Peacocke - 2012 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 86 (1):109-125.
    Drawing upon a conception of the metaphysics of conscious states and of first-person content, we can argue that Descartes's transition ‘Cogito ergo sum’ is both sound and one he is entitled to make. We can nevertheless formulate a version of Lichtenberg's objection that can still be raised after Bernard Williams's discussion. I argue that this form of Lichtenberg's revenge can also be undermined. In doing so it helps to compare the metaphysics of subjects, worlds and times. The arguments also apply (...)
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  • Axiological actualism.Josh Parsons - 2002 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (2):137 – 147.
    This intuition may be contrasted with the incompatible intuitions that might support, say, average utilitarianism. According to average utilitarianism we should bring about that outcome which has the highest average utility. That someone would have a higher than average level of utility is, therefore, ceteris paribus a reason to act so that that person exists. Because of this, the basic intuition is a reason for rejecting average utilitarianism.
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  • Arbitrary reference, numbers, and propositions.Michele Palmira - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):1069-1085.
    Reductionist realist accounts of certain entities, such as the natural numbers and propositions, have been taken to be fatally undermined by what we may call the problem of arbitrary identification. The problem is that there are multiple and equally adequate reductions of the natural numbers to sets (see Benacerraf, 1965), as well as of propositions to unstructured or structured entities (see, e.g., Bealer, 1998; King, Soames, & Speaks, 2014; Melia, 1992). This paper sets out to solve the problem by canvassing (...)
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  • It’s a kind of magic: Lewis, magic and properties.Daniel Nolan - 2020 - Synthese 197 (11):4717-4741.
    David Lewis’s arguments against magical ersatzism are notoriously puzzling. Untangling different strands in those arguments is useful for bringing out what he thought was wrong with not just one style of theory about possible worlds, but with much of the contemporary metaphysics of abstract objects. After setting out what I take Lewis’s arguments to be and how best to resist them, I consider the application of those arguments to general theories of properties and relations. The constraints Lewis motivates turn out (...)
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  • Russell's paradox of the totality of propositions.Nino B. Cocchiarella - 2000 - Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic 5 (1):25-37.
    Russell's "new contradiction" about "the totality of propositions" has been connected with a number of modal paradoxes. M. Oksanen has recently shown how these modal paradoxes are resolved in the set theory NFU. Russell's paradox of the totality of propositions was left unexplained, however. We reconstruct Russell's argument and explain how it is resolved in two intensional logics that are equiconsistent with NFU. We also show how different notions of possible worlds are represented in these intensional logics.
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  • Modal Paradox: Parts and Counterparts, Points and Counterpoints.Nathan Salmon - 1986 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11 (1):75-120.
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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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  • Explanation and nowness: an objection to the A-Theory.Leo Carton Mollica - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (9):2513-2530.
    This paper presents an argument against the A-Theory of time. Briefly, I shall contend that the A-Theorist has no explanation for why the present moment in particular has the metaphysical privilege she accords it, and that this puts the theory at a disadvantage. In what follows, I shall begin by presenting this argument. I will follow that with some potential explanations for why the present moment is privileged and reasons militating against them, in addition to some other possible objections to (...)
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  • Worlds and Times.Ulrich Meyer - 2006 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 47 (1):25--37.
    There are many parallels between the role of possible worlds in modal logic and that of times in tense logic. But the similarities only go so far, and it is important to note where the two come apart. This paper argues that even though worlds and times play similar roles in the model theories of modal and tense logic, there is no tense analogue of the possible-worlds analysis of modal operators. An important corollary of this result is that presentism cannot (...)
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  • The Presentist’s Dilemma.Ulrich Meyer - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 122 (3):213-225.
    This paper defends three theses: that presentism is either trivial or untenable; that the debate between tensed and tenseless theories of time is not about the status of presentism; and that there is no temporal analogue of the modal thesis of actualism.
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  • The Fundamental Theorem of World Theory.Christopher Menzel & Edward N. Zalta - 2014 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 43:333-363.
    The fundamental principle of the theory of possible worlds is that a proposition p is possible if and only if there is a possible world at which p is true. In this paper we present a valid derivation of this principle from a more general theory in which possible worlds are defined rather than taken as primitive. The general theory uses a primitive modality and axiomatizes abstract objects, properties, and propositions. We then show that this general theory has very small (...)
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  • Does the actual world actually exist?Paul McNamara - 1993 - Philosophical Studies 69 (1):59 - 81.
    Assuming minimal fine-individuation--that there are some necessarily equivalent intensional objects (e.g. propositions) that are nonetheless distinct objects, on standard actualist frameworks, the answer to our title question is "No". First I specify a fully cognitively accessible, purely qualitative maximal consistent state of affairs (MCS). (That there is an MCS that is either fully graspable or purely qualitative is in itself quite contrary to conventional dogma.) Then I identify another MCS, one necessarily equivalent to the first. It follows that there could (...)
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  • Propositions: Individuation and Invirtuation.Kris McDaniel - 2015 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (4):757-768.
    The pressure to individuate propositions more finely than intensionally—that is, hyper-intensionally—has two distinct sources. One source is the philosophy of mind: one can believe a proposition without believing an intensionally equivalent proposition. The second source is metaphysics: there are intensionally equivalent propositions, such that one proposition is true in virtue of the other but not vice versa. I focus on what our theory of propositions should look like when it's guided by metaphysical concerns about what is true in virtue of (...)
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  • Causal effects and counterfactual conditionals: contrasting Rubin, Lewis and Pearl.Keith A. Markus - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (3):441-461.
    Rubin and Pearl offered approaches to causal effect estimation and Lewis and Pearl offered theories of counterfactual conditionals. Arguments offered by Pearl and his collaborators support a weak form of equivalence such that notation from the rival theory can be re-purposed to express Pearl’s theory in a way that is equivalent to Pearl’s theory expressed in its native notation. Nonetheless, the many fundamental differences between the theories rule out any stronger form of equivalence. A renewed emphasis on comparative research can (...)
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  • Non-concrete parts of material objects.Michael Tze-Sung Longenecker - 2018 - Synthese 195 (11):5091-5111.
    This article offers a novel solution to the problem of material constitution: by including non-concrete objects among the parts of material objects, we can avoid having a statue and its constituent piece of clay composed of all the same proper parts. Non-concrete objects—objects that aren’t concrete, but possibly are—have been used in defense of the claim that everything necessarily exists. But the account offered shows that non-concreta are independently useful in other domains as well. The resulting view falls under a (...)
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  • Is Lewis a meinongian?Bernard Linsky & Edward N. Zalta - 1991 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (4):438–453.
    The views of David Lewis and the Meinongians are both often met with an incredulous stare. This is not by accident. The stunned disbelief that usually accompanies the stare is a natural first reaction to a large ontology. Indeed, Lewis has been explicitly linked with Meinong, a charge that he has taken great pains to deny. However, the issue is not a simple one. "Meinongianism" is a complex set of distinctions and doctrines about existence and predication, in addition to the (...)
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  • Synthetic apriority.Yakir Levin - 1995 - Erkenntnis 43 (2):137 - 150.
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  • Fictionalism in Metaphysics.Frederick Kroon - 2011 - Philosophy Compass 6 (11):786-803.
    This is a survey of contemporary work on ‘fictionalism in metaphysics’, a term that is taken to signify both the place of fictionalism as a distinctive anti‐realist metaphysics in which usefulness rather than truth is the norm of acceptance, and the fact that philosophers have given fictionalist treatments of a range of specifically metaphysical notions.
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  • Open future and modal anti-realism.Daniel Kodaj - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (2):1-22.
    Open future is incompatible with realism about possible worlds. Since realistically conceived (concrete or abstract) possible worlds are maximal in the sense that they contain/represent the full history of a possible spacetime, past and future included, if such a world is actual now, the future is fully settled now, which rules out openness. The kind of metaphysical indeterminacy required for open future is incompatible with the kind of maximality which is built into the concept of possible worlds. The paper discusses (...)
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  • The Logic of Hyperlogic. Part A: Foundations.Alexander W. Kocurek - 2024 - Review of Symbolic Logic 17 (1):244-271.
    Hyperlogic is a hyperintensional system designed to regiment metalogical claims (e.g., “Intuitionistic logic is correct” or “The law of excluded middle holds”) into the object language, including within embedded environments such as attitude reports and counterfactuals. This paper is the first of a two-part series exploring the logic of hyperlogic. This part presents a minimal logic of hyperlogic and proves its completeness. It consists of two interdefined axiomatic systems: one for classical consequence (truth preservation under a classical interpretation of the (...)
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  • Probabilities of conditionals in context.Justin Khoo - 2016 - Linguistics and Philosophy 39 (1):1-43.
    The Ramseyan thesis that the probability of an indicative conditional is equal to the corresponding conditional probability of its consequent given its antecedent is both widely confirmed and subject to attested counterexamples (e.g., McGee 2000, Kaufmann 2004). This raises several puzzling questions. For instance, why are there interpretations of conditionals that violate this Ramseyan thesis in certain contexts, and why are they otherwise very rare? In this paper, I raise some challenges to Stefan Kaufmann's account of why the Ramseyan thesis (...)
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  • Modal Objectivity.Clarke-Doane Justin - 2019 - Noûs 53:266-295.
    It is widely agreed that the intelligibility of modal metaphysics has been vindicated. Quine's arguments to the contrary supposedly confused analyticity with metaphysical necessity, and rigid with non-rigid designators.2 But even if modal metaphysics is intelligible, it could be misconceived. It could be that metaphysical necessity is not absolute necessity – the strictest real notion of necessity – and that no proposition of traditional metaphysical interest is necessary in every real sense. If there were nothing otherwise “uniquely metaphysically significant” about (...)
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  • Unrestricted Quantification and the Structure of Type Theory.Salvatore Florio & Nicholas K. Jones - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (1):44-64.
    Semantic theories based on a hierarchy of types have prominently been used to defend the possibility of unrestricted quantification. However, they also pose a prima facie problem for it: each quantifier ranges over at most one level of the hierarchy and is therefore not unrestricted. It is difficult to evaluate this problem without a principled account of what it is for a quantifier to be unrestricted. Drawing on an insight of Russell’s about the relationship between quantification and the structure of (...)
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  • Hyperintensional propositions.Mark Jago - 2015 - Synthese 192 (3):585-601.
    Propositions play a central role in contemporary semantics. On the Russellian account, propositions are structured entities containing particulars, properties and relations. This contrasts sharply with the sets-of-possible-worlds view of propositions. I’ll discuss how to extend the sets-of-worlds view to accommodate fine-grained hyperintensional contents. When this is done in a satisfactory way, I’ll argue, it makes heavy use of entities very much like Russellian tuples. The two notions of proposition become inter-definable and inter-substitutable: they are not genuinely distinct accounts of how (...)
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  • Strongly Millian Second-Order Modal Logics.Bruno Jacinto - 2017 - Review of Symbolic Logic 10 (3):397-454.
    The most common first- and second-order modal logics either have as theorems every instance of the Barcan and Converse Barcan formulae and of their second-order analogues, or else fail to capture the actual truth of every theorem of classical first- and second-order logic. In this paper we characterise and motivate sound and complete first- and second-order modal logics that successfully capture the actual truth of every theorem of classical first- and second-order logic and yet do not possess controversial instances of (...)
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  • A powers theory of modality: or, how I learned to stop worrying and reject possible worlds.Jonathan D. Jacobs - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 151 (2):227-248.
    Possible worlds, concrete or abstract as you like, are irrelevant to the truthmakers for modality—or so I shall argue in this paper. First, I present the neo-Humean picture of modality, and explain why those who accept it deny a common sense view of modality. Second, I present what I take to be the most pressing objection to the neo-Humean account, one that, I argue, applies equally well to any theory that grounds modality in possible worlds. Third, I present an alternative, (...)
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  • Science nominalized.Terence Horgan - 1984 - Philosophy of Science 51 (4):529-549.
    I propose a way of formulating scientific laws and magnitude attributions which eliminates ontological commitment to mathematical entities. I argue that science only requires quantitative sentences as thus formulated, and hence that we ought to deny the existence of sets and numbers. I argue that my approach cannot plausibly be extended to the concrete "theoretical" entities of science.
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  • Validity in Intensional Languages: A New Approach.William H. Hanson & James Hawthorne - 1985 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 26 (1):9-35.
    Although the use of possible worlds in semantics has been very fruitful and is now widely accepted, there is a puzzle about the standard definition of validity in possible-worlds semantics that has received little notice and virtually no comment. A sentence of an intensional language is typically said to be valid just in case it is true at every world under every model on every model structure of the language. Each model structure contains a set of possible worlds, and models (...)
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  • Introduction to the Synthese Topical Collection 'Modal Modeling in Science: Modal Epistemology meets Philosophy of Science’.Ylwa Sjölin Wirling & Till Grüne-Yanoff - 2023 - Synthese 201 (6):1-13.
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  • Introspective knowledge by acquaintance.Anna Giustina - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-23.
    Introspective knowledge by acquaintance is knowledge we have by being directly aware of our phenomenally conscious states. In this paper, I argue that introspective knowledge by acquaintance is a sui generis kind of knowledge: it is irreducible to any sort of propositional knowledge and is wholly constituted by a relationship of introspective acquaintance. My main argument is that this is the best explanation of some epistemic facts about phenomenal consciousness and introspection. In particular, it best explains the epistemic asymmetry between (...)
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  • Normative properties.Allan Gibbard - 2003 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1):141-157.
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  • New powers for Dispositionalism.Giacomo Giannini - 2021 - Synthese 199:2671-2700.
    Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account for de re truths (...)
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  • Propositions, representation, and truth.Geoff Georgi - 2019 - Synthese 196 (3):1019-1043.
    Theories of propositions as sets of truth-supporting circumstances are committed to the thesis that sentences or other representations true in all and only the same circumstances express the same proposition. Theories of propositions as complex, structured entities are not committed to this thesis. As a result, structured propositions can play a role in our theories of language and thought that sets of truth-supporting circumstances cannot play. To illustrate this difference, I sketch a theory of transparent, non-deflationary truth consistent with some (...)
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  • Lying versus misleading, with language and pictures: the adverbial account.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2023 - Linguistics and Philosophy 46 (3):509-532.
    We intuitively make a distinction between _lying_ and _misleading_. On the explanation of this phenomenon favored here—the _adverbial_ account—the distinction tracks whether the content and its truth-committing force are literally conveyed. On an alternative _commitment_ account, the difference between lying and misleading is predicated instead on the strength of assertoric commitment. One lies when one presents with full assertoric commitment what one believes to be false; one merely misleads when one presents it without full assertoric commitment, by merely hinting or (...)
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  • Introduction: primitivism versus reductionism about the problem of the unity of the proposition.Manuel García-Carpintero & Bjørn Jespersen - 2019 - Synthese 196 (4):1209-1224.
    We present here the papers selected for the volume on the Unity of Propositions problems. After summarizing what the problems are, we locate them in a spectrum from those aiming to provide substantive, reductive explanations, to those with a more deflationary take on the problems.
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  • Lewis' Indexical Argument for World-Relative Actuality.Richard M. Gale - 1989 - Dialogue 28 (2):289-.
    David Lewis has shocked the philosophical community with his original version of extreme modal realism according to which “every way that a world could possibly be is a way that some world is”. Logical Space is a plenitude of isolated physical worlds, each being the actualization of some way in which a world could be, that bear neither spatiotemporal nor causal relations to each other. Lewis has given independent, converging arguments for this. One is the argument from the indexicality of (...)
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  • Propositional Quantification in Bimodal S5.Peter Fritz - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (2):455-465.
    Propositional quantifiers are added to a propositional modal language with two modal operators. The resulting language is interpreted over so-called products of Kripke frames whose accessibility relations are equivalence relations, letting propositional quantifiers range over the powerset of the set of worlds of the frame. It is first shown that full second-order logic can be recursively embedded in the resulting logic, which entails that the two logics are recursively isomorphic. The embedding is then extended to all sublogics containing the logic (...)
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  • Propositional Contingentism.Peter Fritz - 2016 - Review of Symbolic Logic 9 (1):123-142.
    According to propositional contingentism, it is contingent what propositions there are. This paper presents two ways of modeling contingency in what propositions there are using two classes of possible worlds models. The two classes of models are shown to be equivalent as models of contingency in what propositions there are, although they differ as to which other aspects of reality they represent. These constructions are based on recent work by Robert Stalnaker; the aim of this paper is to explain, expand, (...)
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  • On Stalnaker’s Simple Theory of Propositions.Peter Fritz - 2020 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 50 (1):1-31.
    Robert Stalnaker recently proposed a simple theory of propositions using the notion of a set of propositions being consistent, and conjectured that this theory is equivalent to the claim that propositions form a complete atomic Boolean algebra. This paper clarifies and confirms this conjecture. Stalnaker also noted that some of the principles of his theory may be given up, depending on the intended notion of proposition. This paper therefore also investigates weakened constraints on consistency and the corresponding classes of Boolean (...)
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  • First-order modal logic in the necessary framework of objects.Peter Fritz - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (4-5):584-609.
    I consider the first-order modal logic which counts as valid those sentences which are true on every interpretation of the non-logical constants. Based on the assumptions that it is necessary what individuals there are and that it is necessary which propositions are necessary, Timothy Williamson has tentatively suggested an argument for the claim that this logic is determined by a possible world structure consisting of an infinite set of individuals and an infinite set of worlds. He notes that only the (...)
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  • Against modal dualism.Dirk Franken - 2021 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (2):608-622.
    Modal dualism is the claim that there is a space of epistemically possible worlds that exceeds the space of metaphysically possible worlds. In the present paper, I argue that modal dualism is false. I do so via an argument that differs from most previous arguments against modal dualism in that it does not rely on controversial semantic or epistemological assumptions like descriptivism, internalism or modal rationalism. The point of my argument is, instead, that modal dualism is internally inconsistent because it (...)
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  • Fictional Possibilities Grounded in Foundational Nominalism.Peter Forrest - 2020 - Philosophia 49 (1):1-16.
    David Armstrong in his A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility proposes that non-actual possibilities may be treated as fictions grounded in instantiated universals. In this paper, I first provide some objections to his theory. Then I make the case for Foundational Nominalism, the Armstrong inspired thesis that the whole of ontology supervenes on particulars described much as in the Quinean Nominalism that Armstrong rejected as an ontological ostrich. Finally, I argue that Foundational Nominalism permits a fictional theory of possibilities similar to (...)
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  • Why it isn't syntax that unifies the proposition.Logan Fletcher - 2013 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (5-6):590-611.
    King develops a syntax-based account of propositions based on the idea that propositional unity is grounded in the syntactic structure of the sentence. This account faces two objections: a Benacerraf objection and a grain-size objection. I argue that the syntax-based account survives both objections, as they have been put forward in the existing literature. I go on to show, however, that King equivocates between two distinct notions of ‘propositional structure ’ when explaining his account. Once the confusion is resolved, it (...)
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  • On Lewis against magic: a study of method in metaphysics.A. R. J. Fisher - 2018 - Synthese 195 (5):2335-2353.
    David Lewis objected to theories that posit necessary connections between distinct entities and to theories that involve a magical grasping of their primitives. In On the Plurality of Worlds, Lewis objected to nondescript ersatzism on these grounds. The literature contains several reconstructions of Lewis’ critique of nondescript ersatzism but none of these interpretations adequately address his main argument because they fail to see that Lewis’ critique is based on broader methodological considerations. I argue that a closer look at his methodology (...)
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  • Inquiry. Robert Stalnaker.Hartry Field - 1986 - Philosophy of Science 53 (3):425-448.
    This is an interesting, well argued, and highly readable book; anyone interested in the central philosophical problems with which it deals will benefit from studying it.Stalnaker defines inquiry as the process of forming, testing, and revising beliefs. His goal is to lay the groundwork for a theory of inquiry, by elaborating and defending a certain apparatus in terms of which the process of inquiry should be described.
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  • Da natureza metafísica dos mundos possíveis.Josailton Fernandes de Mendonça - 2015 - Dissertatio 42:261-278.
    Neste artigo examino três distintas teses concernentes ao conceito de mundo possível, a saber, o realismo extremo, o qual se atribui a David Lewis, o realismo moderado, à luz das concepções de Robert Stalnalker e, finalmente, detenho-me em analisar o conceito em Saul Kripke, apoiado em duas de suas obras fundamentais: Semantical Modal Logic e em Naming and Necessity. A seguinte questão orienta o artigo: considerações em torno de situações contrafatuais engendram o compromisso com a existência de entidades exemplificadoras dessas (...)
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  • Combinatorialism and the possibility of nothing.David Efird & Tom Stoneham - 2006 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (2):269 – 280.
    We argue that Armstrong's Combinatorialism allows for the possibility of nothing by giving a Combinatorial account of the empty world and show that such an account is consistent with the ontological and conceptual aims of the theory. We then suggest that the Combinatorialist should allow for this possibility given some methodological considerations. Consequently, rather than being 'spoils for the victor', as Armstrong maintains, deciding whether there might have been nothing helps to determine which metaphysics of modality is to be preferred.
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  • A Metaphysical Puzzle for Neo‐Fregean Abstractionists.Thomas Donaldson - 2023 - Theoria 89 (3):266-279.
    We discuss abstraction principles in the context of modal and temporal logic. It is argued that abstractionism conflicts with both serious presentism and serious actualism.
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