Graeme Forbes., The Metaphysics of Modality

1989 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-81
Author(s):  
Christopher Hookway ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Wilson

The first part of this introduction sketches the main project of the book, and the structure of the arguments for my proposed quantum modal realism. The second part describes the unsatisfying present state of the metaphysics of modality, setting out what I take to be the most serious objections facing the best extant proposals. A naturalistic approach to metaphysics promises to resolve these objections by providing an account of modality that draws only on scientifically respectable theoretical resources. In the third part, I distinguish two big-picture approaches to the metaphysics of modality, and argue for the viability of an unfamiliar approach that takes the nature of contingency as the core phenomenon that a theory of modality needs to explain. In the fourth part, I explain my methodology and briefly defend the general project of naturalistic metaphysics.


1990 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 615
Author(s):  
Mark A. Brown ◽  
Graeme Forbes

Author(s):  
Donald C. Williams

This chapter is a discussion of the metaphysics of modality. The topic is approached through the lens of actualism and trope ontology, two doctrines that have been articulated and defended in previous chapters. The view to be expounded is that necessary facts are objective and not subjective or merely verbal. In addition, necessity is a feature of mereological and resemblance relations among actual ‘qualitied contents’. Since mereological and resemblance relations are intrinsic, our understanding of modality is cashed out in terms of intrinsicality. This is combined with a combinatorial account of possibility: what is possible is grounded in combinations of actual existents.


Noûs ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 465
Author(s):  
Peter Simons ◽  
Graeme Forbes

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Lampert ◽  
Pedro Merlussi

AbstractIn a recent article, P. Roger Turner and Justin Capes argue that no one is, or ever was, even partly morally responsible for certain world-indexed truths. Here we present our reasons for thinking that their argument is unsound: It depends on the premise that possible worlds are maximally consistent states of affairs, which is, under plausible assumptions concerning states of affairs, demonstrably false. Our argument to show this is based on Bertrand Russell’s original ‘paradox of propositions’. We should then opt for a different approach to explain world-indexed truths whose upshot is that we may be (at least partly) morally responsible for some of them. The result to the effect that there are no maximally consistent states of affairs is independently interesting though, since this notion motivates an account of the nature of possible worlds in the metaphysics of modality. We also register in this article, independently of our response to Turner and Capes, and in the spirit of Russell’s aforementioned paradox and many other versions thereof, a proof of the claim that there is no set of all true propositions one can render false.


1988 ◽  
Vol 38 (152) ◽  
pp. 365
Author(s):  
Dorothy Edgington ◽  
Graeme Forbes

2005 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Brower ◽  

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