A thorough critique (extracted from the author’s 1979 doctoral dissertation) of Kripke’s purported derivation, in footnote 56 of his philosophical masterpiece /Naming and Necessity/, of nontrivial modal essentialism from the theory of rigid designation.

In his paper "Are There Set Theoretic Possible Worlds?", Selmer Bringsjord argued that the set theoretic definition of possible worlds proffered by, among others, Robert Adams and Alvin Plantinga is incoherent. It is the purpose of this note to evaluate that argument. The upshot: these set theoretic accounts can be preserved, but only by abandoning the power set axiom.

Actualists who believe in possible worlds typically regard them as "abstract" objects of some special sort. For example, Alvin Plantinga takes worlds to be maximal possible states-of-affairs, all of which "exist", as actualism requires, but only one of which "obtains". Views like Plantinga's run into difficulty in the interpretation of statements of "iterated" modality, statements about what is "possible" for individuals that "could" exist but that do not actually exist. These statements seem to require the existence of "singular" states-Of-affairs that (...) have nonactual individuals as constituents, a requirement that is incompatible with actualism. One can try to avoid the troublesome singular states-of-affairs by introducing "unexemplified individual essences" and maintaining that these are the true constituents of the required states-of-affairs, rather than the nonactual possibles themselves. However, serious arguments are raised against this employment of individual essences. (shrink)

This paper is about two puzzles, or two versions of a single puzzle, which deserve to be called paradoxes, and develops some apparatus in terms of which the apparently conflicting principles which generate the puzzles can be rendered consistent. However, the apparatus itself is somewhat controversial: the puzzles are modal ones, and the resolution to be advocated requires the adoption of a counterpart theoretic semantics of essentially the kind proposed by David Lewis, which in turn requires qualified rejection of certain (...) modal theses about identity which are valid in S5. (shrink)

In a recent article in Analysis, Graeme Hunter and William Seager (1981) attempt to rescue counterpart theory (CT) from some objections of Hazen 1979. They see these objections as arising from ‘uncritical use of the translation scheme originally proposed by Lewis’, and intend to meet them by refraining from use of that scheme. But they do not offer a new scheme; they say ‘…it is no more necessary to have one to capture the sense of modal idiom than it is (...) to capture the sense of quantificational idiom…Appeal to truth value is the single most important criterion of correct translation’ (Hunter and Seager 1981:72). Thus, where the scheme of Lewis (1968) translates a truth by a falsehood or conversely, Hunter and Seager simply produce a sentence which they claim to be a better translation, without articulating any structural principles they employ to arrive at their candidate. A friend of CT should not be happy with this procedure. Let Lm be first-order modal language and Lc be the language of counterpart theory. Sentences of Lc are intended to interpret or elucidate the meanings of Lm-sentences in the strong sense that they should be the outputs of an adequate theory of meaning, which we can formulate as a model theory, for Lm, written in Lc plus set theory. The interest of CT resides in its potential to provide an alternative approach to the model theory of modal logic, and from the clauses of any such alternative model theory we should be able to read off a translation scheme for Lm into Lc, just as we can in the standard case. If CT’s motivation is sound, which Hunter and Seager do not dispute, yet there is no translation scheme and so no counterpart-theoretic model theory, one might suspect some defect in the original language Lm. And in fact, Hunter and Seager find certain Lm-sentences multiply ambiguous with respect to Lc; but if a counterpart-theoretic model theory is possible, to say.. (shrink)

The paper formulates and defends a version of the Identity of Indiscernibles and demonstrates that it entails a non-trivial version of the doctrine of essentialism.

The doctrine of simple individuals has its equal and opposite reaction in the view that an individual is simply a bundle of properties, that the identity of an individual is entirely dependent on the identity of its properties. This view also seems to me to be in some sense wrong and I shall attack it in passing. If all my remarks have seemed excessively polemical it is because I have been anxious to make it as clear as possible what the (...) motivation behind this paper is. I am mainly concerned with the problem concerning the "it" which underlies or has properties and I shall want to argue that the identity of an individual--what it is that makes an individual that individual--does not depend merely on its being that individual or having that piece of substratum, but it depends partially and in a complicated way on the identity of its properties. The analysis will have to exhibit the nature of that dependence. Most of the discussion will revolve around proper names and their function since it is through linguistic considerations, I think, that we get the clearest illumination. The result, in case any one is interested, will be Absolute Idealism, or something like it. (shrink)

ONE KIND OF PHILOSOPHICAL PUZZLEMENT arises when we have an apparent conflict of intuitions. If we are philosophers, we then try to show that the apparent conflict of intuitions is only an apparent conflict and not a real one. If we fail, we may have to say that what we took to be an apparent conflict of intuitions was in fact a conflict of apparent intuitions, and then we must decide which of the conflicting apparent intuitions is only an apparent (...) intuition. But if we succeed, then both of the intuitions will be preserved. Since there was an apparent conflict, we will have to conclude that the formulation of at least one of the intuitions was defective. And though the formulation may be imbedded in our ordinary language, we will have to say that, strictly and philosophically, a different formulation is to be preferred. But to make it clear that we are not rejecting the intuition we are reformulating, we must show systematically how to interpret the ordinary formulation into the philosophical one. The extent to which we can show this will be one mark of our success in dealing with the philosophical puzzle. Another will be the extent to which our proposed solution contributes to the solution of still other philosophical puzzles. (shrink)

In the paper Plantinga refers to, I had set forth three axioms for what I had called the strict and philosophical sense of the term "part," or "proper part." These axioms tell us, in effect, that the expression "x is an S-part of y" expresses a relation that is transitive, asymmetric, and such that x bears it to y at all times that y exists. The latter clause may be put in Plantinga’s terms by saying "x bears it to y (...) at every time in every world in which y exists." Plantinga points out that there are several other relations that also have these properties, for example, the relation of proper set inclusion among sets of contingent objects. He asks, therefore, whether it is possible to supplement my three axioms in such a way that they single out properties that are peculiar to the relation of strict proper part. (shrink)

This paper examines and comments on roderick chisholm's "parts as essential to their wholes", "review of metaphysics", Volume 26, 1973.