more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Modal thinking is logically equivalent to a type of counterfactual thinking. ...The necessary is that which is counterfactually implied by its own negation; the possible is that which does not counterfactually imply its own negation.
Gist of Idea
Necessity is counterfactually implied by its negation; possibility does not counterfactually imply its negation
Source
Timothy Williamson (Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic [2010], 1)
Book Ref
'Modality', ed/tr. Hale,B/Hoffman,A [OUP 2010], p.83
A Reaction
I really like this, because it builds modality on ordinary imaginative thinking. He says you just need to grasp counterfactuals, and also negation and absurdity, and you can then understand necessity and possibility. We can all do that.
| 18797 | Modalities do not augment our concepts; they express their relation to cognition [Kant] |
| 12205 | There are two families of modal notions, metaphysical and epistemic, of equal strength [Edgington] |
| 14625 | Necessity is counterfactually implied by its negation; possibility does not counterfactually imply its negation [Williamson] |
| 10709 | Priority is a modality, arising from collections and members [Potter] |
| 14528 | Maybe modal thought is unavoidable, as a priori recognition of necessary truth-preservation in reasoning [Hale/Hoffmann,A] |
| 17535 | Dispositionality has its own distinctive type of modality [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14579 | Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 14580 | Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum] |