The Metaphysics of Modality

The Metaphysics of Modality PDF Author: Graeme Forbes
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Analytic philosophy has recently demonstrated a revived interest in metaphysical problems about possibility and necessity. Graeme Forbes here provides a careful description of the logical background of recent work in this area for those who may be unfamiliar with it, moving on to d discuss the distinction between modality de re and modality de dicto and the ontological commitments of possible worlds semantics. In addition, Forbes offers a unified theory of the essential properties of sets, organisms, artefacts, substances, and events, based on the doctrine that identity facts must be intrinsically grounded, and analyzes and rejects apparent counterexamples to this doctrine.

The Metaphysics of Modality

The Metaphysics of Modality PDF Author: Graeme Forbes
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
Analytic philosophy has recently demonstrated a revived interest in metaphysical problems about possibility and necessity. Graeme Forbes here provides a careful description of the logical background of recent work in this area for those who may be unfamiliar with it, moving on to d discuss the distinction between modality de re and modality de dicto and the ontological commitments of possible worlds semantics. In addition, Forbes offers a unified theory of the essential properties of sets, organisms, artefacts, substances, and events, based on the doctrine that identity facts must be intrinsically grounded, and analyzes and rejects apparent counterexamples to this doctrine.

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality PDF Author: Alvin Plantinga
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195103769
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This volume collects the most important articles on the metaphysics of modality by philosopher Alvin Plantinga. The focus is on such fundamental issues in metaphysics as the nature of abstract objects.

Modality

Modality PDF Author: Bob Hale
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191572292
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
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.

A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality

A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality PDF Author: Andrea Borghini
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472521943
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality examines the eight main contemporary theories of possibility behind a central metaphysical topic. Covering modal skepticism, modal expressivism, modalism, modal realism, ersatzism, modal fictionalism, modal agnosticism, and the new modal actualism, this comprehensive introduction to modality places contemporary debates in an historical context. Beginning with a historical overview, Andrea Borghini discusses Parmenides and Zeno; looks at how central Medieval authors such as Aquinas, and Buridan prepared the ground for the Early Modern radical views of Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hume and discusses advancements in semantics in the later-half of the twentieth century a resulted in the rise of modal metaphysics, the branch characterizing the past few decades of philosophical reflection. Framing the debate according to three main perspectives - logical, epistemic, metaphysical- Borghini provides the basic concepts and terms required to discuss modality. With suggestions of further reading and end-of-chapter study questions, A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality is an up-to-date resource for students working in contemporary metaphysics seeking a better understanding of this crucial topic.

Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality

Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality PDF Author: Mircea Dumitru
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192598287
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
This book is the first edited collection of papers on the work of one of the most seminal and profound contemporary philosophers. Over the last five decades, Kit Fine has made thought-provoking and innovative contributions to several areas of systematic philosophy, including philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mathematics, as well as to a number of topics in philosophical logic. These contributions have helped reshape the agendas of those fields and have given fresh impetus to a number of perennial debates. Fine's work is distinguished by its technical sophistication, philosophical breadth, and independence from current orthodoxy. A blend of sound common-sense combined with a virtuosity in argumentation and constructive thinking is part and parcel of Kit Fine's lasting contributions to current trends in analytic philosophy. Researchers and students in philosophy, logic, linguistics, and cognitive science will benefit alike from these critical contributions to Fine's novel theories on meaning and representation, arbitrary objects, essence, ontological realism, and the metaphysics of modality, and will come away with a better understanding of the issues within contemporary analytic philosophy with which they deal.

The Actual and the Possible

The Actual and the Possible PDF Author: Mark Sinclair
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198786433
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
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.

Necessity and Possibility

Necessity and Possibility PDF Author: Michael Tooley
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780815333821
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Williamson on Modality

Williamson on Modality PDF Author: Juhani Yli-Vakkuri
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351730045
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
Timothy Williamson is one of the most influential living philosophers working in the areas of logic and metaphysics. His work in these areas has been particularly influential in shaping debates about metaphysical modality, which is the topic of his recent provocative and closely-argued book Modal Logic as Metaphysics (2013). This book comprises ten essays by metaphysicians and logicians responding to Williamson’s work on metaphysical modality, as well as replies by Williamson to each essay. In addition, it contains an original essay by Williamson, ‘Modal science,’ concerning the role of modal claims in natural science. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

Modality

Modality PDF Author: Joseph Melia
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317489675
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This introduction to modality places the emphasis on the metaphysics of modality rather than on the formal semetics of quantified modal logic. The text begins by introducing students to the "de re/de dicto" distinction, conventionalist and conceptualist theories of modality and some of the key problems in modality, particularly Quine's criticisms. It then moves on to explain how possible worlds provide a solution to many of the problems in modality and how possible worlds themselves have been used to analyse notions outside modality such as properties and propositions. Possible worlds introduce problems of their own and the book argues that to make progress with these problems a theory of possible worlds is required. The pros and cons of various theories of possible worlds are then examined in turn, including those of Lewis, Kripke, Adams, Stalnaker and Plantinga.

Modal Logic as Metaphysics

Modal Logic as Metaphysics PDF Author: Timothy Williamson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019955207X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
Timothy Williamson gives an original and provocative treatment of deep metaphysical questions about existence, contingency, and change, using the latest resources of quantified modal logic. Contrary to the widespread assumption that logic and metaphysics are disjoint, he argues that modal logic provides a structural core for metaphysics.