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Single Idea 15025

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

Full Idea

At bottom, the world is an amodal place. Necessity and possibility do not carve at the joints; ultimate reality is not 'full of threats and promises' (Goodman). The book of the world says how things are, not how they must or might be.

Gist of Idea

The world does not contain necessity and possibility - merely how things are

Source

Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12)

Book Ref

Sider,Theodore: 'Writing the Book of the World' [OUP 2011], p.266

A Reaction

Nice to see this expressed so clearly. I find it much easier to disagree with as a result. At first blush I would say that if you haven't noticed that the world is full of threats and promises, you should wake up and smell the coffee. Actuality is active.

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]