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The Metaphysics Of Modality A Study In The Foundations Of Necessity Possibility
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Book Synopsis THE METAPHYSICS OF MODALITY: A STUDY IN THE FOUNDATIONS OF NECESSITY (POSSIBILITY). by : SCOTT A. SHALKOWSKI
Download or read book THE METAPHYSICS OF MODALITY: A STUDY IN THE FOUNDATIONS OF NECESSITY (POSSIBILITY). written by SCOTT A. SHALKOWSKI and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: other notions that we already have at our disposal? The second question is what makes truths involving necessity true? What is their ontological grounding in the world? This essay is directed at the first of these questions.
Book Synopsis Mere Possibilities by : Robert Stalnaker
Download or read book Mere Possibilities written by Robert Stalnaker and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-08 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It seems reasonable to believe that there might have existed things other than those that in fact exist, or have existed. But how should we understand such claims? Standard semantic theories exploit the Leibnizian metaphor of a set of all possible worlds: a proposition might or must be true if it is true in some or all possible worlds. The actualist, who believes that nothing exists except what actually exists, prefers to talk of possible states of the world, or of ways that a world might be. But even the actualist still faces the problem of explaining what we are talking about when we talk about the domains of other possible worlds. In Mere Possibilities, Robert Stalnaker develops a framework for clarifying this problem, and explores a number of actualist strategies for solving it. Some philosophers have hypothesized a realm of individual essences that stand as proxies for all merely possible beings. Others have argued that we are committed to the necessary existence of everything that does or might exist. In contrast, Mere Possibilities shows how we can make sense of ordinary beliefs about what might and must exist without making counterintuitive metaphysical commitments. The book also sheds new light on the nature of metaphysical theorizing by exploring the interaction of semantic and metaphysical issues, the connections between different metaphysical issues, and the nature of ontological commitment.
Download or read book Modality written by Bob Hale and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophy of modality investigates necessity and possibility, and related notions—are they objective features of mind-independent reality? If so, are they irreducible, or can modal facts be explained in other terms? This volume presents new work on modality by established leaders in the field and by up-and-coming philosophers. Between them, the papers address fundamental questions concerning realism and anti-realism about modality, the nature and basis of facts about what is possible and what is necessary, the nature of modal knowledge, modal logic and its relations to necessary existence and to counterfactual reasoning. The general introduction locates the individual contributions in the wider context of the contemporary discussion of the metaphysics and epistemology of modality.
Book Synopsis Necessity and Possibility by : Michael Tooley
Download or read book Necessity and Possibility written by Michael Tooley and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1999 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Book Synopsis The Foundations of Modality by : Peter Fritz
Download or read book The Foundations of Modality written by Peter Fritz and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notions of necessity and possibility, as well as the notion of a possible world, are ubiquitous in philosophy. Nevertheless, these notions remain controversial. This book develops a general framework for theorizing about these notions using the tools of higher-order logic.
Book Synopsis The Foundations of Modality by : Peter Fritz
Download or read book The Foundations of Modality written by Peter Fritz and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notions of necessity and possibility, as well as the notion of a possible world, are ubiquitous in philosophy. Nevertheless, these notions remain controversial. This book develops a general framework for theorizing about these notions using the tools of higher-order logic.
Download or read book Necessary Beings written by Bob Hale and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bob Hale presents a broadly Fregean approach to metaphysics, according to which ontology and modality are mutually dependent upon one another. He argues that facts about what kinds of things exist depend on facts about what is possible. Modal facts are fundamental, and have their basis in the essences of things—not in meanings or concepts.
Book Synopsis The Theory of Ontic Modalities by : Uwe Meixner
Download or read book The Theory of Ontic Modalities written by Uwe Meixner and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a comprehensive, non-model-theoretic theory of ontic necessity and possibility within a formal (and formalized) ontology consisting of states of affairs, properties, and individuals. Its central thesis is that all modalities are reducible to intrinsic (or "logical") possibility and necessity if reference is made to certain states of affairs, called "bases of necessity." The viability of this Bases-Theory of Modality is shown also in the case of conditionals, including counterfactual conditionals. Besides the ontological aspects of the philosophy of modality, also the epistemology of modality is treated in the book. It is shown that the Bases-Theory of Modality provides a satisfactory solution to the epistemological problem of modality. In addition to developing that theory, the book includes detailed discussions of positions in the philosophy of modality maintained by Alvin Plantinga, David Lewis, Charles Chihara, Graeme Forbes, David Armstrong, and others. Among the themes treated are: possibilism vs. actualism; the theory of essences; conceivability and possibility; the nature of possible worlds; the nature of logical, nomological, and metaphysical possibility and necessity.
Book Synopsis A Philosophy of the Possible by : Mikhail Epstein
Download or read book A Philosophy of the Possible written by Mikhail Epstein and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic theory of modalities (possible, actual, necessary) and their impact on the philosophy and culture of modernity and postmodernity, focusing on the creative potentials of possibilistic thinking for the humanities.
Book Synopsis Logical Modalities from Aristotle to Carnap by : Max Cresswell
Download or read book Logical Modalities from Aristotle to Carnap written by Max Cresswell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in the metaphysics and logic of possible worlds goes back at least as far as Aristotle, but few books address the history of these important concepts. This volume offers new essays on the theories about the logical modalities (necessity and possibility) held by leading philosophers from Aristotle in ancient Greece to Rudolf Carnap in the twentieth century. The story begins with an illuminating discussion of Aristotle's views on the connection between logic and metaphysics, continues through the Stoic and mediaeval (including Arabic) traditions, and then moves to the early modern period with particular attention to Locke and Leibniz. The views of Kant, Peirce, C. I. Lewis and Carnap complete the volume. Many of the essays illuminate the connection between the historical figures studied, and recent or current work in the philosophy of modality. The result is a rich and wide-ranging picture of the history of the logical modalities.
Book Synopsis Kant's Modal Metaphysics by : Nicholas F. Stang
Download or read book Kant's Modal Metaphysics written by Nicholas F. Stang and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-18 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is possible and why? What is the difference between the merely possible and the actual? In Kants Modal Metaphysics Nicholas Stang examines Kants lifelong engagement with these questions and their role in his philosophical development. This is the first book to trace Kants theory of possibility all theway from the so-called pre-Critical writings of the 1750s and 1760s to the Critical system of philosophy inaugurated by the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Stang argues that the key to understanding both the change and the continuity between Kants pre-Critical and Critical theory of possibility is his transformation of the ontological question about possibility-what is it for a being to be possible?-into a question in transcendental philosophy-what is it to represent an object as possible? The first half of Kants Modal Metaphysics explores Kants pre-Critical theory of possibility, including his answer to the ontological question about the nature of possibility, his rejection of the traditional ontological argument for the existence of God, and his own argument that God must exist to ground all possibility. The second half examines why Kant reoriented his theory of possibility around the transcendental question, what this question means, and how Kant answered it in the Critical philosophy. Stang shows that, despite this reorientation, Kants basic scheme for thinking about possibility remains constant from the pre-Critical period through the Critical system. What had been an ontological theory of possible being is reinterpreted, in the Critical system, as a theory of how we must represent possible objects, given the nature of our intellect.
Book Synopsis The Actual and the Possible by : Mark Sinclair
Download or read book The Actual and the Possible written by Mark Sinclair and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Actual and the Possible presents new essays by leading specialists on modality and the metaphysics of modality in the history of modern philosophy from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. It revisits key moments in the history of modern modal doctrines, and illuminates lesser-known moments of that history. The ultimate purpose of this historical approach is to contextualise and even to offer some alternatives to dominant positions within the contemporary philosophy of modality. Hence the volume contains not only new scholarship on the early-modern doctrines of Baruch Spinoza, G. W. F. Leibniz, Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant, but also work relating to less familiar nineteenth-century thinkers such as Alexius Meinong and Jan Lukasiewicz, together with essays on celebrated nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers such as G. W. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger and Bertrand Russell, whose modal doctrines have not previously garnered the attention they deserve. The volume thus covers a variety of traditions, and its historical range extends to the end of the twentieth century, addressing the legacy of W. V. Quine's critique of modality within recent analytic philosophy.
Download or read book Possibility written by Michael Jubien and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-12 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Possibility is a philosophical treatise on the metaphysical concepts of possibility and necessity. Jubien rejects the idea of possible worlds, and starts instead the notion of a physical object and the positing of properties and relations. He has new things to say about such topics as essentialism, natural kinds, and proper names.
Book Synopsis Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy Volume 5 by : Robert Pasnau
Download or read book Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy Volume 5 written by Robert Pasnau and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy showcases the best new scholarly work on philosophy from the end of antiquity into the Renaissance. OSMP combines historical scholarship with philosophical acuteness, and will be an essential resource for anyone working in the area.
Download or read book Necessary Beings written by Bob Hale and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Necessary Beings is concerned with two central areas of metaphysics: modality—the theory of necessity, possibility, and other related notions; and ontology—the general study of what kinds of entities there are. Bob Hale's overarching purpose is to develop and defend two quite general theses about what is required for the existence of entities of various kinds: that questions about what kinds of things there are cannot be properly understood or adequately answered without recourse to considerations about possibility and necessity, and that, conversely, questions about the nature and basis of necessity and possibility cannot be satisfactorily tackled without drawing on what might be called the methodology of ontology. Taken together, these two theses claim that ontology and modality are mutually dependent upon one another, neither more fundamental than the other. Hale defends a broadly Fregean approach to metaphysics, according to which ontological distinctions among different kinds of things (objects, properties, and relations) are to be drawn on the basis of prior distinctions between different logical types of expression. The claim that facts about what kinds of things exist depend upon facts about what is possible makes little sense unless one accepts that at least some modal facts are fundamental, and not reducible to facts of some other, non-modal, sort. He argues that facts about what is absolutely necessary or possible have this character, and that they have their source or basis, not in meanings or concepts nor in facts about alternative 'worlds', but in the natures or essences of things.
Download or read book Modality written by Joseph Melia and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2003 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More and more philosophers are using modal notions to solve problems and analyse concepts. In his introduction to the topic of modality Joseph Melia focuses on possible worlds as the best way to understand the nature of necessity. Melia demonstrates how different theories about possible worlds not only influence our more general modal beliefs but illustrate and illuminate various methodological considerations, such as the degree to which any philosophical theory ought to respect common sense. The book begins by introducing readers to various notions of possibility, the de re/de dicto distinction, and the ubiquity of our modal concepts. It then presents an accessible introduction to modal logic and possible worlds semantics. Melia argues that by including possible worlds in our metaphysics, we can justify such formal semantics, refute Quine's modal scepticism, and make sense of our ordinary thought and talk about the modal. Various theories of possible worlds are critically examined, including David Lewis' extreme realism, Alvin Plantinga's moderate realism, David Armstrong's combinatorialism, and the linguistic theory. The book is accessible and engaging throughout and will be welcomed by students looking for a non-technical introduction to a much discussed and contested area of philosophical inquiry. Book jacket.
Book Synopsis The Nature of Contingency by : Alastair Wilson
Download or read book The Nature of Contingency written by Alastair Wilson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing possibility, necessity, actuality, chance, counterfactuals, and a host of related modal notions. Rationalist metaphysicians argue that the metaphysics of modality is strictly prior to any scientific investigation; metaphysics establishes which worlds are possible, and physics merely checks which of these worlds is actual. Naturalistic metaphysicians respond that science may discover new possibilities and new impossibilities. This book's quantum theory of contingency takes naturalistic metaphysics one step further, allowing that science may discover what it is to be possible. As electromagnetism revealed the nature of light, as acoustics revealed the nature of sound, as statistical mechanics revealed the nature of heat, so quantum physics reveals the nature of contingency.
