Relevant bibliographies by topics / Metaphysical modality

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  2. Dissertations / Theses
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Academic literature on the topic 'Metaphysical modality'

Author: Grafiati
Published: 4 June 2021
Last updated: 15 February 2022

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Journal articles on the topic "Metaphysical modality"

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GODMAN, MARION, ANTONELLA MALLOZZI, and DAVID PAPINEAU. "Essential Properties Are Super-Explanatory: Taming Metaphysical Modality." Journal of the American Philosophical Association 6, no. 3 (2020): 316–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/apa.2019.48.

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AbstractThis article aims to build a bridge between two areas of philosophical research: the structure of kinds and metaphysical modality. Our central thesis is that kinds typically involve super-explanatory properties, and that these properties are therefore metaphysically essential to natural kinds. Philosophers of science who work on kinds tend to emphasize their complexity, and are generally resistant to any suggestion that they have essences. The complexities are real enough, but they should not be allowed to obscure the way that kinds are typically unified by certain core properties. We show how this unifying role offers a natural account of why certain properties are metaphysically essential to kinds.
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Yli-Vakkuri, Juhani. "Epistemicism and modality." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46, no. 4-5 (August 2016): 803–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2016.1201878.

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AbstractWhat kind of semantics should someone who accepts the epistemicist theory of vagueness defended in Timothy Williamson's Vagueness (1994) give a definiteness operator? To impose some interesting constraints on acceptable answers to this question, I will assume that the object language also contains a metaphysical necessity operator and a metaphysical actuality operator. I will suggest that the answer is to be found by working within a three-dimensional model theory. I will provide sketches of two ways of extracting an epistemicist semantics from that model theory, one of which I will find to be more plausible than the other.
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Deng, Duen-Min. "On the Alleged Knowledge of Metaphysical Modality." Philosophia 44, no. 2 (March 24, 2016): 479–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9699-6.

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FURTADO, FERNANDO. "S5-denying Approach to Relativized Metaphysical Modality." Manuscrito 43, no. 1 (March 2020): 1–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0100-6045.2020.v32n1.ff.

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Gaultier, Benoit. "Thought Experiments and Knowledge of Metaphysical Modality." Grazer Philosophische Studien 93, no. 4 (November 7, 2016): 525–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18756735-09303001.

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According to Timothy Williamson, philosophy is not a mere conceptual investigation and does not involve a specific cognitive ability, different in nature from those involved in acquiring scientific or ordinary knowledge of the world. The author holds that Williamson does not succeed in explaining how it is possible for us to acquire, through thought experiments, the type of knowledge that, according to him, philosophy predominantly aims to acquire—namely, knowledge of metaphysical modality. More specifically, the author considers in detail Russell’s stopped clock and Locke’s prince and the cobbler thought experiments, and argues that Williamson has not shown how the kind of thought experiment of which they are instances, and which is typically encountered in philosophy, can be the instrument of knowledge of metaphysical modality that he takes this kind of thought experiment to be. More positively, the author advances that the modal conclusions of such thought experiments are drawn through conceptual investigation.
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Williamson, Timothy. "I *-ARMCHAIR PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICAL MODALITY AND COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback) 105, no. 1 (June 2005): 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-7373.2004.00100.x.

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Ditter, Andreas. "The Reduction of Necessity to Essence." Mind 129, no. 514 (September 4, 2019): 351–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzz045.

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Abstract In ‘Essence and Modality’, Kit Fine (1994) proposes that for a proposition to be metaphysically necessary is for it to be true in virtue of the nature of all objects. Call this view Fine’s Thesis. This paper is a study of Fine’s Thesis in the context of Fine’s logic of essence (LE). Fine himself has offered his most elaborate defence of the thesis in the context of LE. His defence rests on the widely shared assumption that metaphysical necessity obeys the laws of the modal logic S5. In order to get S5 for metaphysical necessity, he assumes a controversial principle about the nature of all objects. I will show that the addition of this principle to his original system E5 leads to inconsistency with an independently plausible principle about essence. In response, I develop a theory that avoids this inconsistency while allowing us to maintain S5 for metaphysical necessity. However, I conclude that our investigation of Fine’s Thesis in the context of LE motivates the revisionary conclusion that metaphysical necessity obeys the principles of the modal logic S4, but not those of S5. I argue that this constitutes a distinctively essentialist challenge to the received view that the logic of metaphysical necessity is S5.
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Ciprotti, Nicola, and Luca Moretti. "Logical Pluralism is Compatible with Monism about Metaphysical Modality." Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87, no. 2 (June 2009): 275–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048400802340626.

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Austin, Christopher J. "Contemporary Hylomorphisms: On the Matter of Form." Ancient Philosophy Today 2, no. 2 (October 2020): 113–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/anph.2020.0032.

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As there is currently a neo-Aristotelian revival currently taking place within contemporary metaphysics and dispositions, or causal powers are now being routinely utilised in theories of causality and modality, more attention is beginning to be paid to a central Aristotelian concern: the metaphysics of substantial unity, and the doctrine of hylomorphism. In this paper, I distinguish two strands of hylomorphism present in the contemporary literature and argue that not only does each engender unique conceptual difficulties, but neither adequately captures the metaphysics of Aristotelian hylomorphism. Thus both strands of contemporary hylomorphism, I argue, fundamentally misunderstand what substantial unity amounts to in the hylomorphic framework – namely, the metaphysical inseparability of matter and form.
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Rayo, Agustin. "Essence Without Fundamentality." THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science 30, no. 3 (November 12, 2015): 349–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1387/theoria.14472.

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Modality and Explanatory Reasoning</span><span>, Boris Kment argues that a single notion of essence can be used to play two distinct theoretical roles. He thinks there is an important connec- tion between essence and metaphysical necessity, on the one hand, and between essence and metaphysical explanation, on the other. </span></p><p><span>In this paper I will argue that it is not clear that a single notion of essence should be used to perform both these jobs. For whereas the project of giving metaphysical explanations requires a notion of essence that distinguishes between truths that are more or less “funda- mental” in a metaphysical sense, the project of shedding light on metaphysical necessity does not.
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Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Metaphysical modality"

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Moriarty, Siobhan. "Ontological categories, existence statements, and metaphysical modality." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2017. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/19043/.

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What is the content of the claim that tropes a and b are co-instantiated if there is no such thing as tropes? I begin this thesis by arguing that a sentence expressing such a claim would be deficient in content and would, therefore, not be truth-apt. I use this claim to set up a general presupposition problem for the truth-apt sentences of our language. I argue that all truth-apt sentences presuppose the existence of the kinds of things which are to serve as the semantic values of their terms. Understanding the content of such a presupposition requires understanding the content of a categorial existence claim. However, I argue, it is incredibly difficult to provide a construal of categorial existence claims which does not presuppose the existence of the very things that they would be used to assert the existence of. I argue that to provide a satisfactory construal, we need to appeal to the notion of an ontological category. I contend that the notion of an ontological category with which we can provide a satisfactory construal of existence claims is a broadly Lowean one. I show that, as it stands, Lowe’s construal is not adequate to the task but that it can be modified so that it is. Making use of such a modified construal, I defend a metalinguistic construal of categorial existence claims. In chapters five and six, I argue that if we fully appreciate the notion of an ontological category which has been introduced, the notion of that which I claimed we have to make use in answering the question of ontology and referring to things in the world, we will recognise that such ontological categories ground, or partially ground, de re modal truths, and through them, the truths of metaphysical modality.
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Kimpton-Nye, Samuel. "Common ground for laws and metaphysical modality." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2018. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/common-ground-for-laws-and-metaphysical-modality(29ec9a5e-a444-4059-855d-2fc43234f89f).html.

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Philosophers in general, and metaphysicians in particular, are largely concerned with metaphysical modality, that is, with what is possible and necessary, in the broadest sense, and with what makes propositions about metaphysical modality true. Metaphysicians are also concerned with ontology, that is, with what exists and the nature of what exists. Ontology covers such questions as 'do numbers exist?' and 'do universals exist?' and, if numbers and universals do exist, 'what are they like?' and 'how do they exist?'. The laws of nature, such as the law of universal gravitation, Coulomb's law and the Schrödinger equation, for example, raise interesting philosophical questions at the intersection of metaphysics and the philosophy of science, such as 'what is the relationship between laws of nature and scientific explanation?' and 'in what sense, if any, are we free to break the laws?'. Questions about modality, ontology and laws of nature connect in interesting ways. The kinds of things - propositions, universals, possible worlds, etc. - that one is willing to countenance will impact what one can say about the metaphysics of modality and natural laws. The point is illustrated nicely via consideration of Humean constraints on respectable ontology popularized by David Lewis and the ensuing metaphysics of laws and modality that Lewis defends. What distinguishes lawful from non-lawful regularities, according to Lewis, is the fact that the former, but not the latter, are axioms of the description of all property instances throughout the Humean mosaic, which maximizes the virtues of informativeness and simplicity. This is the crux of Lewis's best system analysis of natural laws (BSA) (see, e.g., Lewis 1983, 1994, 2001; Earman 1984; Loewer 1996). Natural laws are thus accounted for in a manner that the Humean finds metaphysically innocuous because no appeal is made to any mysterious governing forces or necessary connections between distinct existences. The Humean is primarily concerned with defending (the tenability of) an ontology, which then informs and places restrictions on what can be said about laws and modality. However, one's primary concern might just as well be with analysing the laws and, dissatisfied with regularity accounts, such as the BSA, one might be motivated to develop an alternative account of laws with its own distinctive ontological implications. My concern in this thesis is with exploring the interactions between a cluster of specific views about ontology, modality and the laws of nature. The particular ontology I am interested in is unHumean in the sense that it admits necessary connections between properties and the behaviours that they confer because properties have non-trivial essences which ground certain behaviours. The account of laws is metaphysically thin for it conceives of the laws as merely descriptive, à la the BSA. And the metaphysics of modality that I am interested in roots modality firmly in the actual world.
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Yang, Chin-mu. "A natural modal system." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.357300.

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Strohminger, Margot. "Knowledge of modality by imagining." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6351.

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Assertions about metaphysical modality (hereafter modality) play central roles in philosophical theorizing. For example, when philosophers propose hypothetical counterexamples, they often are making a claim to the effect that some state of affairs is possible. Getting the epistemology of modality right is thus important. Debates have been preoccupied with assessing whether imaginability—or conceivability, insofar as it's different—is a guide to possibility, or whether it is rather intuitions of possibility—and modal intuitions more generally—that are evidence for possibility (modal) claims. The dissertation argues that the imagination plays a subtler role than the first view recognizes, and a more central one than the second view does. In particular, it defends an epistemology of metaphysical modality on which someone can acquire modal knowledge in virtue of having performed certain complex imaginative exercises.
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McLeod, Stephen K. "Modality and anti-metaphysics." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.364089.

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Adams, Sarah Nicola. "Theism & the metaphysics of modality." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2015. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/11178/.

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Much cutting-edge research has been produced in the quest to find out which metaphysical account of modality is best. Comparatively little rigorous investigation has been devoted to questioning whether such accounts are compatible with classical theism. This thesis remedies some of this neglect and charts some of this previously under-explored territory existing at the intersection of metaphysics and philosophy of religion. Such an investigation is important since salient among the tenets of classical theism are ones that are characteristically modal. Not only is the classical monotheistic deity supposed to exist and possess the various divine-making properties necessarily; many of these properties themselves seem to include a modal component. An omniscient being is one who could not fail to know some proposition (once it’s true); and an omnipotent being is such that, for an appropriate set of tasks, it could perform them. Classical theism also comprises modal commitments about non-divine individuals: everything distinct from God is supposed to be necessarily dependent upon God; and human beings are supposed to have been granted the freedom to do otherwise. In short, the unique metaphysical properties of a classical monotheistic deity burden the theist with substantial metaphysical and ethical commitments any theory of modality must uphold; this thesis questions which one may do so best. However, the discussion must be limited to a small number of theories. Those examined here explain modality in terms of something ultimately non-modal; either by reducing modality to something else (e.g., a particular ontology of possible worlds), or by denying that modal discourse has the function of describing, in a truth-apt way, some part of mind-independent reality. So this project is a partial investigation into a more specific question: which of these theories which deny that modality is fundamentally real best fits with theism?
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Melia, Joseph. "The nature of modality." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.239492.

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Biggs, Stephen Thomas. "Modality and Mind." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194531.

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This dissertation consists of two parts. Part I proposes a new approach to modality, abductive modal realism. Part II proposes a new version of physicalism, abductive physicalism. The parts relate in that abductive physicalism presupposes abductive modal realism.Abductive modal realism holds that inference to the best explanation (i.e. abduction) grounds some and any justified belief about mind-independent necessity and possibility. This approach avoids the disadvantages of extant approaches to modality. Specifically, unlike extant approaches, abductive modal realism accepts real, mind-independent necessities and possibilities without employing a modal epistemology that fits these poorly. Abductive physicalism holds that we should adopt abductive modal realism, that abduction favors physicalism, and thus, that we should adopt physicalism. Although standard a posteriori physicalism accepts the latter claims, it sees appeals to abduction as exceptions to an otherwise non-abductive modal epistemology. Abductive physicalism, contrariwise, sees abduction as the arbitrator of modal disputes quite generally. This difference allows abductive physicalism to avoid problems that plague standard a posteriori physicalism.
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Wilson, Alastair. "Modality naturalized : the metaphysics of Everettian quantum mechanics." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.543605.

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Hoffmann, Aviv 1964. "Actualism, singular propositions, and possible worlds : essays in metaphysics of modality." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8154.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references.
My dissertation consists of three essays in the Metaphysics of Modality: In "A Puzzle about Truth and Singular Propositions," I consider two theses that seem to be true and then an argument for the conclusion that they form an inconsistent pair. One thesis is that a proposition that is singular with respect to a given object implies that the object exists. This is so because the proposition predicates something of the object. The other thesis is that some propositions are true with respect to possible worlds in which they do not exist. An example is the negation of the proposition that Socrates is wise. This proposition is true with respect to possible worlds in which Socrates does not exist, but it does not exist in those worlds. In "Actualism, Ontological Dependence, and Possible Worlds," I consider Actualism, the doctrine that every possible object is an actual object. Plantinga has argued that the actualist is committed to the existence of unexemplified essences if he analyzes statements of modality by quantifying over possible worlds and over members of their domains. I argue that the actualist is committed to the existence of unexemplified essences even if he paraphrases statements of modality by quantifying only over possible worlds and actual objects. In "Possibilism and the Nature of Actuality," I consider Possibilism, the doctrine that there are possible objects that are not actual objects.
(cont.) Possibilism seems to be a coherent ontological doctrine. It is not Meinong's doctrine that there are objects of which it is true to say that there are no such objects. If one fails to distinguish between these two doctrines, then one's attempt to refute Possibilism might amount to an attack on a blatant contradiction. I illustrate this claim by arguing that the distinction between Possibilism and Meinong's doctrine has eluded Plantinga. I then consider the view that Possibilism is a consequence of Lewis's doctrine that 'actual' is an indexical term. I also argue that the sense in which Lewis said that 'actual' is indexical is an esoteric sense of the word, not a sense it ordinarily has.
by Aviv Hoffmann.
Ph.D.
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Books on the topic "Metaphysical modality"

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Ways a world might be: Metaphysical and anti-metaphysical essays. Oxford: Clarendon, 2003.

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Engagement and metaphysical dissatisfaction: Modality and value. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

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Modality: Metaphysics, logic, and epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

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The metaphysics of modality. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.

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Modality. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003.

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1972-, Davidson Matthew, ed. Essays in the metaphysics of modality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

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Lycan, William G. Modality and meaning. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994.

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Esistenza necessaria e oggetti possibili: La metafisica modale di Timothy Williamson. Milano: CUEM, 2008.

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Modalität: Möglichkeit, Notwendigkeit, Essenzialismus. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2008.

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Adriane, Rini, ed. The world-time parallel: Tense and modality in logic and metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

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Book chapters on the topic "Metaphysical modality"

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Hellie, Benj, Adam Russell Murray, and Jessica M. Wilson. "Relativized metaphysical modality." In The Routledge Handbook of Modality, 82–99. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |Includes bibliographical references and index.: Routledge, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315742144-11.

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Hall, Ned. "Physical and metaphysical modality." In The Routledge Handbook of Modality, 265–78. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |Includes bibliographical references and index.: Routledge, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315742144-30.

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Hale, Bob. "The logic of metaphysical modality." In The Routledge Handbook of Modality, 308–18. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |Includes bibliographical references and index.: Routledge, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315742144-34.

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Wilson, Jessica. "Hume's Dictum and Metaphysical Modality." In A Companion to David Lewis, 138–58. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781118398593.ch10.

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Kment, Boris. "Modality, Metaphysics, and Method." In The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods, 179–207. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137344557_8.

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Kayange, Grivas Muchineripi. "Modality." In The Question of Being in Western and African Analytic Metaphysics, 89–107. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69645-0_5.

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Higginbotham, James. "The English Perfect and the Metaphysics of Events." In Time and Modality, 173–93. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8354-9_8.

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Dunlap, John T. "Models, Modality, and Natural Theology." In Logic, God and Metaphysics, 99–109. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1992. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2670-0_8.

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Williams, Stephen, and David Charles. "Essence, Modality, and the Master Craftsman." In Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics, 121–45. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137367907_7.

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Boulter, Stephen. "Evolutionary Biology, Modality and Explanation." In Metaphysics from a Biological Point of View, 116–32. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137322821_7.

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