Contingent Existence and the Reduction of Modality to Essence

Trevor Teitel

doi:10.1093/mind/fzx001

On What There Isn’t (But Might Have Been)

Mere Possibilities ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691147123.003.0001 ◽

2012 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Robert Stalnaker

Keyword(s):

Possible Worlds ◽

Philosophical Analysis ◽

Costs And Benefits ◽

Philosophical Theory ◽

Making Sense ◽

Contingent Existence

This chapter begins with some preliminary methodological remarks—about the aim and value of reduction in philosophical analysis, about thinking of the evaluation of philosophical theses in terms of costs and benefits, and about the contrast between realistic and anti-realistic accounts of a philosophical theory. It then discusses what possible worlds are and what the problem is about merely possible individuals. It argues that possible worlds are properties and not representations. It then takes an extended look at some examples of properties that are simpler and easier to think about than possible worlds but that share some of the features of possible worlds, construed as properties. It uses the analogy developed to motivate a metaphysically innocent account of the domains of other possible worlds. It defends a view that is committed to making sense of the contingent existence of individuals and properties, of propositions, and even of possible worlds themselves. The chapter concludes by sketching a problem that an account of this kind faces, a problem that will be addressed in Chapter 2.

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The Constitutive Archetypes: The Image of God Emerging at the Furthest Borders of Conscious Dealings with our Primordial Condition of Contingent Existence

The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life ◽

10.1007/978-94-007-2257-6_10 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 117-119

Author(s):

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

Keyword(s):

Image Of God ◽

The Image Of God ◽

Contingent Existence

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The Dialectical Illusion in Kant’s Only Possible Argument for the Existence of God

Kantian Review ◽

10.1017/s1369415420000199 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 25 (3) ◽

pp. 339-363

Author(s):

Noam Hoffer

Keyword(s):

Pure Reason ◽

Critique Of Pure Reason ◽

Existence Of God ◽

Regulative Idea ◽

Contingent Existence

AbstractThe nature of Kant’s criticism of his pre-Critical ‘possibility proof’ for the existence of God, implicit in the account of the Transcendental Ideal in the Critique of Pure Reason, is still under dispute. Two issues are at stake: the error in the proof and diagnosis of the reason for committing it. I offer a new way to connect these issues. In contrast with accounts that locate the motivation for the error in reason’s interest in an unconditioned causal ground of all contingent existence, I argue that it lies in reason’s interest in another kind of unconditioned ground, collective unity. Unlike the conception of the former, that of the latter directly explains the problematic ontological assumption of the possibility proof, the existence of intelligible objects as the ground of possibility. I argue that such Platonic entities are assumed because they are amenable to the kind of unity prescribed by reason. However, since the interest in collective unity has a legitimate regulative use when applied to the systematic unity of nature, the conception of God entailed by the possibility proof is retained as a regulative idea of reason.

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Five Sources of Contingency for Dispositionalism

Metaphysica ◽

10.1515/mp-2019-0004 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 9-30

Author(s):

Michele Paolini Paoletti

Keyword(s):

Laws Of Nature ◽

Dispositional Essentialism ◽

Contingent Existence

AbstractLaw dispositionalism is the doctrine according to which laws of nature are grounded on powers/dispositions. In this article, I shall examine how certain laws of nature can turn out to be contingent on this view. First of all, I shall distinguish between two versions of law dispositionalism (i. e. a weak and a strong one) and I shall also single out two further theses that may be conjoined with it (i. e. strong and weak dispositional essentialism). I shall also single out four different sorts of laws of nature. Afterwards, I shall examine five sources of contingency for law dispositionalism: the contingent existence of the relevant entities involved in the laws; the contigent activation, background and possession conditions of the powers at stake; the presence of contingent constants in the laws; the presence of indeterministic powers; the presence of powers that are not essential to the entities involved in the laws.

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Is Existence a Predicate in Anselm's Argument?

Religious Studies ◽

10.1017/s0034412500002638 ◽

1966 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 121-127

Author(s):

David M. Lochhead

Keyword(s):

Ontological Argument ◽

Necessary Existence ◽

Contingent Existence ◽

The Way

One of the most annoying things to many a student of St Anselm's Proslogion is the way in which many philosophers assume that they can make Anselm's argument disappear simply by uttering the incantation, ‘Existence is not a predicate’. Some recent studies of the argument1 have tried to rescue it from Kant's dictum by showing that this criticism does not apply to Anselm's so-called ‘second’ ontological argument. This argument appears in chapter III of Proslogion and depends on a distinction between ‘necessary existence’ and ‘contingent existence’. Both Malcolm and Hartshorne are content, however, to let the better known ‘first’ argument (Proslogion, chapter II) rest in the oblivion to which Kant assigned it.

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“From phenomenon, throughout the fact, to foundation”. Outline of the concept of man and its development according to Edith Stein (1891–1942)

Biuletyn Historii Wychowania ◽

10.14746/bhw.2019.40.5 ◽

1970 ◽

pp. 85-96

Author(s):

Sławomir Chrost

Keyword(s):

Eternal Life ◽

Edith Stein ◽

Ultimate Truth ◽

The Cross ◽

Mystery Of God ◽

Difficult Road ◽

Contingent Existence

Edyta Stein – Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross – was fascinated by the “mystery of man”. Discovering this mystery led her to experience the “mystery of God”. She had a beautiful and difficult road leading through life and scientific transgressions, the path from thanatology to transthanatology, from the existence of a contingent existence to the existence of eternal Being. According to Edith Stein, the existence of man is unique. Everyone has to discover the fullness of his existence. Here comes Stein’s transition from psychological and philosophical considerations (phenomenon-fact) to theological considerations (foundation). By learning about God, man recognizes himself and discovers the ultimate truth of his existence. Whoever does not reach himself will not find God and enter eternal life. Or better: whoever does not find God will not find himself (no matter how much focus he will give on finding himself) and the source of eternal life that awaits him in his own interior.

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Dark Thoughts about [Theatre] History

Theatre Survey ◽

10.1017/s0040557404000134 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 45 (2) ◽

pp. 189-193

Author(s):

Virginia Scott

Keyword(s):

Theatre History ◽

Representational Practices ◽

The Future ◽

The One ◽

Contingent Existence

Coetzee's nameless speaker, known only as “Mother,” is accused by her son of an excess of righteousness, and so might I be if I were to agree with her, at least in part, about that gang of thugs. Nonetheless, my hope for the future of the discipline does include the possibility that Clio will escape from the particular thug responsible for jargon and gibberish. Actually, nothing arouses darker thoughts in those of us who believe in lucid and stylish prose than sentences like “what is at stake here is the possibility that the cultural presence of the actor in theatre and in theatre history is delimited by material representational practices generated within a particular discursive site, and subject to the constraints of what can be enunciated about the self's contingent existence.” This may be perfectly clear to others, but I read it as a signal to a choir within which I do not sing, and I stop reading—a pity, since the topic is especially interesting to me and the author has important things to say. But, as Terry Eagleton says in his new book After Theory (the one presently receiving an international drubbing), “you can be difficult without being obscure.”

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Hick, Necessary Being, and the Cosmological Argument

Canadian Journal of Philosophy ◽

10.1080/00455091.1972.10716033 ◽

1972 ◽

Vol 1 (4) ◽

pp. 473-483 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

D. R. Duff-Forbes

Keyword(s):

Central Position ◽

Cosmological Argument ◽

Necessary Being ◽

Necessary Existence ◽

Contingent Existence

The concepts of necessary being, or necessary existence, and contingent being, or contingent existence, continue to occupy a central position in philosophical appraisals of Christian theism. Some philosophers have been concerned of late to emphasize a crucial ambiguity in the terms ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent', an ambiguity which threatens seriously to bedevil assessment of the claim that God's existence is necessary and not contingent. An important consequence of getting clear on this point, it is suggested, is that certain brisk attempts to demolish the concept of a necessary being may be seen at least to be premature, leaving untouched,, as they do, an apparently viable sense in which God can be said to be a, indeed the, necessary being.This, substantially, is the position advocated by Professor J.H. Hick in recent discussions of this point. Hick maintains that it is of the greatest importance to distinguish two fundamentally different and contrasting notions of necessary being or necessary existence.

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