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Single Idea 14692

[filed under theme 4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 3. Modal Logic Systems / f. System B ]

Full Idea

Friends of B modal logic commit themselves to the loaded claim that it is logically true that the property of possibly being realized (or being a way things might have been) is an essential property of the world.

Gist of Idea

System B implies that possibly-being-realized is an essential property of the world

Source

Nathan Salmon (The Logic of What Might Have Been [1989], V)

Book Ref

Salmon,Nathan: 'Metaphysics, Mathematics and Meaning' [OUP 2005], p.146


A Reaction

I think this 'loaded' formulation captures quite nicely the dispositional view I favour, that the possibilities of the actual world are built into the actual world, and define its nature just as much as the 'categorial' facts do.


The 5 ideas with the same theme [version imposing two conditions on accessibility]:

System B has not been justified as fallacy-free for reasoning on what might have been [Salmon,N]
In B it seems logically possible to have both p true and p is necessarily possibly false [Salmon,N]
System B implies that possibly-being-realized is an essential property of the world [Salmon,N]
The system B has the 'reflexive' and 'symmetric' conditions on its accessibility relation [Fitting/Mendelsohn]
System B introduces iterated modalities [Sider]