Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality
Author: Alvin Plantinga
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2003-05-15
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0195103769

This volume collects the most important articles on the metaphysics of modality by philosopher Alvin Plantinga. The focus is on such fundamental issues in metaphysics as the nature of abstract objects.

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality
Author: Alvin Plantinga
Publisher:
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2001
Genre: Metaphysics
ISBN: 9780199833573

This volume collects the most important articles on the metaphysics of modality by philosopher Alvin Plantinga. The focus is on such fundamental issues in metaphysics as the nature of abstract objects.

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality
Author: Alvin Plantinga
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2003-03-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780198026389

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 Actual and the Possible

The Actual and the Possible
Author: Mark Sinclair
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2017
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0198786433

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.

The Possible and the Actual

The Possible and the Actual
Author: Michael J. Loux
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1979
Genre: First philosophy
ISBN: 9780801491788

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.

Ontology, Identity, and Modality

Ontology, Identity, and Modality
Author: Peter van Inwagen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2001-03-22
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780521795487

This book gathers together thirteen of Peter van Inwagen's essays on metaphysics, several of which have acquired the status of modern classics in their field. They range widely across such topics as Quine's philosophy of quantification, the ontology of fiction, the part-whole relation, the theory of 'temporal parts', and human knowledge of modal truths. In addition, van Inwagen considers the question as to whether the psychological continuity theory of personal identity is compatible with materialism, and defends the thesis that possible states of affairs are abstract objects, in opposition to David Lewis's 'extreme modal realism'. A specially-written introduction completes the collection, which will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in metaphysics.

Modal Matters

Modal Matters
Author: Phillip Bricker
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 511
Release: 2020-02-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199676569

Drawing together his work from four decades, Phillip Bricker provides a comprehensive account of modal reality - the realm of possible worlds - from a Humean perspective, with excursions into neighboring topics in metaphysics. Many of the chapters in this volume focus on aspects of David Lewis's metaphysics and his defence of modal realism, sometimes further developing and defending Lewis's views, sometimes deviating from them in substantial ways. The volume is presented in four parts: part one sketches an account of reality as a whole, both the mathematical and the modal, defending a form of plenitudinous realism; part two presents and defends a realist theory of concrete possible worlds with an absolute ontological distinction between the actual and the merely possible; part three presents and defends a Humean account of modal plenitude, formulating and endorsing principles that guarantee a plenitude of recombination, of possible structures, and of alien contents; and part four applies the Humean account to truthmaking, mereology, spacetime, and quantities. An uncompromising Humean, Bricker shows that holding fast to Humean strictures leads to views that differ in radical ways from those prevalent among contemporary metaphysicians.

Williamson on Modality

Williamson on Modality
Author: Juhani Yli-Vakkuri
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 490
Release: 2018-10-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351730045

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.

Williamson on Modality

Williamson on Modality
Author: Juhani Yli-Vakkuri
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2018-10-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351730053

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.

Mathematics, Models, and Modality

Mathematics, Models, and Modality
Author: John P. Burgess
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2008-02-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 113947054X

John Burgess is the author of a rich and creative body of work which seeks to defend classical logic and mathematics through counter-criticism of their nominalist, intuitionist, relevantist, and other critics. This selection of his essays, which spans twenty-five years, addresses key topics including nominalism, neo-logicism, intuitionism, modal logic, analyticity, and translation. An introduction sets the essays in context and offers a retrospective appraisal of their aims. The volume will be of interest to a wide range of readers across philosophy of mathematics, logic, and philosophy of language.