How to Reconcile Essence With Contingent Existence

McLeod, Stephen K.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9329.2008.00404.x

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…This fact is widely discussed in the literature on metaphysical essentialism; see e.g Wiggins (1976),Fine (1994), andMcLeod (2008)…”

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confidence: 90%

Counterpart theories for everyone

Varzi

2020

Synthese

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David Lewis’s counterpart theory (CT) is often seen as involving a radical departure from the standard, Kripke-style semantics for modal logic (ML), suggesting that we are dealing with deeply divergent accounts of our modal talk. However, CT captures but one version of the relevant semantic intuition, and does so on the basis of metaphysical assumptions (all worlds are equally real, individuals are world-bound) that are ostensibly discretionary. Just as ML can be translated into a language that quantifies explicitly over worlds, CT may be formulated as a semantic theory in which world quantification is purely metalinguistic. And just as Kripke-style semantics is formally compatible with the doctrine of world-boundedness, a counterpart-based semantics may in principle allow for cases of trans-world identity. In fact, one may welcome a framework that is general enough to include both Lewis’s counterpart-based account and Kripke’s identity-based account as distinguished special cases. There are several ways of doing so. The purpose of this paper is to outline a fully general option and to illustrate its philosophical significance, showing how the large variety of intermediate relations that lie between Lewisian counterparthood and Kripkean identity yield a corresponding variety of modal theories that would otherwise remain uncharted.

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“…This fact is widely discussed in the literature on metaphysical essentialism; see e.g Wiggins (1976),Fine (1994), andMcLeod (2008)…”

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confidence: 90%

Counterpart theories for everyone

Varzi

2020

Synthese

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“…Efectivamente, una de las razones principales por las que Kripke la introduce es para evitar las cuestiones que presentan los casos de objetos que no existen en el mundo actual, o el caso de los mera possibillia, objetos meramente posibles. Esta noción intuitiva de necesidad débil es criticada por McLeod (2008). Si el objetivo de la propuesta es reconciliar la necesidad de re con la existencia contingente del designatum, entonces un punto central es si el paso de:…”

Section: Necesidad Metafísica Débilunclassified

Enunciados necesarios a posteriori, necesidad débil y racionalismo

Rojas

2016

Ideas y Valores

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<p>Se afirma que los enunciados necesarios a posteriori, propuestos por S. Kripke, exigen una comprensión débil de la necesidad; esto quiere decir: a) existencia contingen-te del designatum(no existencia en toda situación contrafáctica) y b) dependencia racionalista en principios lógicos a priori, particularmente los de diferencia y de identidad. La principal consecuencia es que los enunciados necesarios a posteriori corresponden a instancias de dichos principios lógicos. Contrario al racionalismo, esto no exige que dichos enunciados sean a priori, pues su justificación requiere in-formación empírica. Finalmente, se defiende que la distinción entre denotación y designación permite sostener que la necesidad débil se aplica a las instanciasde la clase, y no a esta, con lo que se evita el indeterminismo referencial.</p>

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“…We take it that this is a problem for the Priorian and standard accounts because it means that they fail to deliver on their philosophical desideratum that it is in no sense true that 'whatever exists exists necessarily'. (In the case of the standard account, see further McLeod 2008. ) Let us show why Fine's critique of the Priorian and standard responses to the 'puzzle' is correct.…”

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On a Supposed Puzzle Concerning Modality and Existence

Atkinson¹,

Hill²,

McLeod³

2019

orgf

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Kit Fine has proposed a new solution to what he calls 'a familiar puzzle' concerning modality and existence. The puzzle concerns the argument from the alleged truths 'It is necessary that Socrates is a man' and 'It is possible that Socrates does not exist' to the apparent falsehood 'It is possible that Socrates is a man and does not exist'. We discuss in detail Fine's setting up of the 'puzzle' and his rejection, with which we concur, of two mooted solutions to it. (One of these uses standard, Kripkean, notions, and the other rests on work done by Arthur Prior.) We set out, and reject, the philosophy of modality underlying Fine's new solution, and we defend an alternative response to the alleged puzzle. Our solution follows the work of David Wiggins in distinguishing between the sentential operator 'It is necessary that' and the predicate modifier 'necessarily'. We briefly provide this distinction with a possibleworld semantics on which it is neither a necessary truth, in some sense, that Socrates exists nor true, in some sense, that Socrates necessarily exists.

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How to Reconcile Essence With Contingent Existence

Cited by 5 publications

References 5 publications

Counterpart theories for everyone

Counterpart theories for everyone

Enunciados necesarios a posteriori, necesidad débil y racionalismo

On a Supposed Puzzle Concerning Modality and Existence

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