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Full Idea
Metaphysically, nothing in the actual world seems to be a candidate for determining what is necessarily the case.
Gist of Idea
There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts
Source
Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.4)
Book Ref
Sidelle,Alan: 'Necessity, Essence and Individuation' [Cornell 1989], p.115
A Reaction
I file this under 'Dispositions' to show what is at stake in the debate about dispositional and categorical properties. I take a commitment to dispositions to be a commitment to modal facts about the actual world.
| 11938 | The Megarans say something is only capable of something when it is actually doing it [Aristotle] |
| 15766 | Megaran actualism is just scepticism about the qualities of things [Aristotle] |
| 15767 | Megaran actualists prevent anything from happening, by denying a capacity for it to happen! [Aristotle] |
| 21491 | Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| 16945 | We judge things to be soluble if they are the same kind as, or similar to, things that do dissolve [Quine] |
| 15490 | Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB] |
| 15315 | What is a field of potentials, if it only consists of possible events? [Harré/Madden] |
| 15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
| 9499 | Megarian actualists deny unmanifested dispositions [Bird] |
| 14350 | If a disposition is never instantiated, it shouldn't be part of our theory of nature [Corry] |
| 19017 | Nomological dispositions (unlike ordinary ones) have to be continually realised [Vetter] |