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Single Idea 11108

[filed under theme 10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 5. Modality from Actuality ]

Full Idea

The possibility of your having been a playwright has nothing to do with how people are on other planets, whether in our own or in some other realm. It is only to do with you and the relevant property.

Gist of Idea

Your properties, not some other world, decide your possibilities

Source

Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1)

Book Ref

'Oxford Studies in Metaphysics vol.3', ed/tr. Zimmerman,Dean W. [OUP 2007], p.100

A Reaction

I'm inclined to think that this simple point is conclusive disproof of possible worlds as an explanation of modality (apart from Jubien's other nice points). What we need to understand are modal properties, not other worlds.

The 15 ideas with the same theme [all modal facts are grounded in the actual facts]:

3013 Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius]
12978 A perfect idea of an object shows that the object is possible [Leibniz]
5483 Essentialists deny possible worlds, and say possibilities are what is compatible with the actual world [Ellis]
16436 Modal concepts are central to the actual world, and shouldn't need extravagant metaphysics [Stalnaker]
17572 Actuality proves possibility, but that doesn't explain how it is possible [Inwagen]
12186 Modal realists hold that necessities and possibilities are part of the totality of facts [McFetridge]
6080 Modality is not objects or properties, but the type of binding of objects to properties [McGinn]
14689 Necessity and possibility are not just necessity and possibility according to the actual world [Salmon,N]
11108 Your properties, not some other world, decide your possibilities [Jubien]
11111 Modal truths are facts about parts of this world, not about remote maximal entities [Jubien]
11118 Modal propositions transcend the concrete, but not the actual [Jubien]
10745 Science is modally committed, to disposition, causation and law [Oliver]
15025 The world does not contain necessity and possibility - merely how things are [Sider]
12468 A state of affairs is only possible if there has been an actual substance to initiate it [Pruss]
12466 All modality is in the properties and relations of the actual world [Jacobs]