The Metaphysics Of Modality

The Metaphysics Of Modality Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The Metaphysics Of Modality book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

The Metaphysics of Modality

Author : Graeme Forbes
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 1985
Category : Metaphysics
ISBN : UOM:39015008988795

Get Book

The Metaphysics of Modality by Graeme Forbes Pdf

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.

Williamson on Modality

Author : Juhani Yli-Vakkuri,Mark McCullagh
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 490 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2018-10-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781351730044

Get Book

Williamson on Modality by Juhani Yli-Vakkuri,Mark McCullagh Pdf

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

Author : Bob Hale,Aviv Hoffmann
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2010-03-25
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191572296

Get Book

Modality by Bob Hale,Aviv Hoffmann Pdf

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

Author : Andrea Borghini
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2016-02-25
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781472521941

Get Book

A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality by Andrea Borghini Pdf

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.

Modal Logic as Metaphysics

Author : Timothy Williamson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2013-03-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199552078

Get Book

Modal Logic as Metaphysics by Timothy Williamson Pdf

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.

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality

Author : Alvin Plantinga
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2003-03-27
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190282936

Get Book

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality by Alvin Plantinga Pdf

Perhaps no one has done more in the last 30 years to advance thinking in the metaphysics of modality than has Alvin Plantinga. Collected here are some of his most important essays on this influential subject. Dating back from the late 1960's to the present, they chronicle the development of Plantinga's thoughts about some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics: what is the nature of abstract objects like possible worlds, properties, propositions, and such phenomena? Are there possible but non-actual objects? Can objects that do not exist exemplify properties? Plantinga gives thorough and penetrating answers to all of these questions and many others. This volume contains some of the best work in metaphysics from the past 30 years, and will remain a source of critical contention and keen interest among philosophers of metaphysics and philosophical logic for years to come.

The World-Time Parallel

Author : A. A. Rini,M. J. Cresswell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2012-01-19
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781107017474

Get Book

The World-Time Parallel by A. A. Rini,M. J. Cresswell Pdf

The only book to investigate the parallel between what happens at other times and what happens in other possible worlds.

The Possible and the Actual

Author : Michael J. Loux
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1979
Category : First philosophy
ISBN : 0801491789

Get Book

The Possible and the Actual by Michael J. Loux Pdf

This well-chosen collection of fifteen important essays in the fields of philosophical logic and metaphysics addresses questions relating to the nature and status of possible worlds.

Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality

Author : Mircea Dumitru
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 431 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2020-10-27
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192598288

Get Book

Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality by Mircea Dumitru Pdf

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.

What Tends to Be

Author : Rani Lill Anjum,Stephen Mumford
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2018-05-11
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781351009799

Get Book

What Tends to Be by Rani Lill Anjum,Stephen Mumford Pdf

People tend to enjoy listening to music or watching television, sleeping at night and celebrating birthdays. Plants tend to grow and thrive in sunlight and mild temperatures. We also know that tendencies are not perfectly regular and that there are patterns in the natural world, which are reliable to a degree, but not absolute. What should we make of a world where things tend to be one way but could be another? Is there a position between necessity and possibility? If there is, what are the implications for science, knowledge and ethics? This book explores these questions and is the first full-length treatment of the philosophy of tendencies. Anjum and Mumford argue that although the philosophical language of tendencies has been around since Aristotle, there has not been any serious commitment to the irreducible modality that they involve. They also argue that the acceptance of an irreducible and sui generis tendential modality ought to be the fundamental commitment of any genuine realism about dispositions or powers. It is the dispositional modality that makes dispositions authentically disposition-like. Armed with this theory the authors apply it to a variety of key philosophical topics such as chance, causation, epistemology and free will.

The Actual and the Possible

Author : Mark Sinclair
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : PHILOSOPHY
ISBN : 9780198786436

Get Book

The Actual and the Possible by Mark Sinclair Pdf

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

Author : Michael Tooley
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Causation
ISBN : 081533382X

Get Book

Necessity and Possibility by Michael Tooley Pdf

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

Kant's Modal Metaphysics

Author : Nicholas F. Stang
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2016-03-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191021091

Get Book

Kant's Modal Metaphysics by Nicholas F. Stang Pdf

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.

Potentiality

Author : Barbara Vetter
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Disposition (Philosophy)
ISBN : 9780198714316

Get Book

Potentiality by Barbara Vetter Pdf

Individual objects have potentials: paper has the potential to burn, an acorn has the potential to turn into a tree, some people have the potential to run a mile in less than four minutes. Barbara Vetter provides a systematic investigation into the metaphysics of such potentials, and an account of metaphysical modality based on them. In contemporary philosophy, potentials have been recognized mostly in the form of so-called dispositions: solubility, fragility, and so on. Vetter takes dispositions as her starting point, but argues for and develops a more comprehensive conception of potentiality. She shows how, with this more comprehensive conception, an account of metaphysical modality can be given that meets three crucial requirements: (1) Extensional correctness: providing the right truth-values for statements of possibility and necessity; (2) formal adequacy: providing the right logic for metaphysical modality; and (3) semantic utility: providing a semantics that links ordinary modal language to the metaphysics of modality. The resulting view of modality is a version of dispositionalism about modality: it takes modality to be a matter of the dispositions of individual objects (and, crucially, not of possible worlds). This approach has a long philosophical tradition going back to Aristotle, but has been largely neglected in contemporary philosophy. In recent years, it has become a live option again due to the rise of anti-Humean, powers-based metaphysics. The aim of Potentiality and Possibility is to develop the dispositionalist view in a way that takes account of contemporary developments in metaphysics, logic, and semantics.

Modality

Author : Joseph Melia
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2014-12-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781317489689

Get Book

Modality by Joseph Melia Pdf

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.