Contingent Objects, Contingent Propositions, and Essentialism

Mind ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Werner
Keyword(s):  
Metaphysical Modality

Abstract Trevor Teitel (2017) has recently argued that combining the assumption that modality reduces to essence with the assumption that possibly some objects contingently exist leads to problems if one wishes to uphold that the logic of metaphysical modality is S5. In this paper I will argue that there is a way for the essentialist to evade the problem described by Teitel. The proposed solution crucially involves the assumption that some propositions possibly fail to exist. I will show how this assumption affords a motivated contingentist response to Teitel’s argument.

Analysing Modality

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-73
Author(s):  
Alastair Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Modal Realism ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Metaphysical Modality ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
Reductive Theory

This chapter presents and defends the basic tenets of quantum modal realism. The first of these principles, Individualism, states that Everett worlds are metaphysically possible worlds. The converse of this principle, Generality, states that metaphysically possible worlds are Everett worlds. Combining Individualism and Generality yields Alignment, a conjecture about the nature of possible worlds that is closely analogous to Lewisian modal realism. Like Lewisian modal realism, Alignment entails that each possible world is a real concrete individual of the same basic kind as the actual world. These similarities render EQM suitable for grounding a novel theory of the nature of metaphysical modality with some unique properties. Also like Lewisian modal realism, quantum modal realism is a reductive theory: it accounts for modality in fundamentally non-modal terms. But quantum modal realism also has unique epistemological advantages over Lewisian modal realism and other extant realist approaches to modality.

Methodological Advantages

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-208
Author(s):  
Amie L. Thomasson
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Metaphysical Modality ◽  
Conceptual Schemes ◽  
Conceptual Engineering ◽  
Modal Normativism ◽  
Metalinguistic Negotiation

This chapter makes the case that modal normativism also brings significant methodological advantages. First, it can provide a much-needed justification of using intuitions, thought experiments, and a form of conceptual analysis, in answering metaphysical modal questions. Second, it provides a straightforward methodology for answering such questions—considered as “internal” questions—and gives reasons for thinking that some such questions are simply unanswerable. But such questions may also be addressed as external questions, where we are concerned not with what rules our terms do follow, but what rules they should follow, and what linguistic and conceptual schemes we should use. This gives us the means for understanding some debates about metaphysical modality as engaged in metalinguistic negotiation and conceptual engineering—and thereby preserving the idea that such debates may be deep and important.

scholarly journals Essential Properties Are Super-Explanatory: Taming Metaphysical Modality

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARION GODMAN ◽  
ANTONELLA MALLOZZI ◽  
DAVID PAPINEAU
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Metaphysical Modality ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Essential Properties ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article aims to build a bridge between two areas of philosophical research: the structure of kinds and metaphysical modality. Our central thesis is that kinds typically involve super-explanatory properties, and that these properties are therefore metaphysically essential to natural kinds. Philosophers of science who work on kinds tend to emphasize their complexity, and are generally resistant to any suggestion that they have essences. The complexities are real enough, but they should not be allowed to obscure the way that kinds are typically unified by certain core properties. We show how this unifying role offers a natural account of why certain properties are metaphysically essential to kinds.

scholarly journals Moderate Modal Skepticism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margot Strohminger ◽  
Juhani Yli-Vakkuri
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Metaphysical Modality ◽  
Van Inwagen ◽  
Peter Van Inwagen ◽  
Modal Skepticism

This chapter examines moderate modal skepticism, a form of skepticism about metaphysical modality defended by Peter van Inwagen in order to blunt the force of certain modal arguments in the philosophy of religion. Van Inwagen’s argument for moderate modal skepticism assumes Yablo’s (1993) influential world-based epistemology of possibility. This chapter raises two problems for this epistemology of possibility, which undermine van Inwagen’s argument. It then considers how one might motivate moderate modal skepticism by relying on a different epistemology of possibility, which does not face these problems: Williamson’s (2007) counterfactual-based epistemology. Two ways of motivating moderate modal skepticism within that framework are found unpromising. Nevertheless, the chapter also finds a way of vindicating an epistemological thesis that, while weaker than moderate modal skepticism, is strong enough to support the methodological moral van Inwagen wishes to draw.

S5 as the Logic of Metaphysical Modality: Two Arguments for and Two Arguments against

2020 ◽  
pp. 141-148
Author(s):  
Bob Hale
Keyword(s):  
Logical Necessity ◽  
Metaphysical Modality ◽  
Absolute Necessity ◽  
Michael Dummett ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Nathan Salmon

Two arguments for S5 being the logic of metaphysical modality are favourably discussed: one from the logic of absolute necessity, one from Timothy Williamson. Two arguments against S5 being the logic of metaphysical modality are discussed and rebuffed: one from Nathan Salmon against S4, and thereby S5, being the logical of metaphysical modality; and one from Michael Dummett against the B principle for metaphysical modality. In the Appendix, some comments are offered on the logics of ‘true in virtue of the nature of’, and its relation to logical necessity. It is argued that the logic both of ‘true in virtue of the nature of x’ and of essentialist logical necessity is S5.

Comments on Penelope Mackie’s “Can Metaphysical Modality Be Based on Essence?”

2020 ◽  
pp. 461-465
Author(s):  
Kit Fine
Keyword(s):  
Metaphysical Modality

Penelope Mackie’s chapter raises a serious challenge to the essentialist account of modality. According to this account, the necessity of S is a matter of its being essential to some F’s that S be the case. Thus, under a familiar notation, the advocate of such an account will accept, for any sentence S, the equivalence:...

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