more from this thinker     |     more from this text

Single Idea 9203

[filed under theme 10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / a. Transworld identity ]

Full Idea

'Necessarily 9>7' may be true while the sentence 'necessarily the number of planets < 7' is false, even though it is obtained by substituting a coreferential term. So quantification in these contexts is unintelligible, without a clear object.

Gist of Idea

We can't quantify in modal contexts, because the modality depends on descriptions, not objects

Source

report of Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953]) by Kit Fine - Intro to 'Modality and Tense' p. 4

Book Ref

Fine,Kit: 'Modality and Tense' [OUP 2005], p.4

A Reaction

This is Quine's second argument against modality. See Idea 9201 for his first. Fine attempts to refute it. The standard reply seems to be to insist that 9 must therefore be an object, which pushes materialist philosophers into reluctant platonism.

Related Idea

Idea 9201 Whether 9 is necessarily greater than 7 depends on how '9' is described [Quine, by Fine,K]

The 31 ideas with the same theme [can possible things be the same as actual things?]:

17208 A horse would be destroyed if it were changed into a man or an insect [Spinoza]
12904 If varieties of myself can be conceived of as distinct from me, then they are not me [Leibniz]
11981 If someone's life went differently, then that would be another individual [Leibniz]
11027 To know an object you must know all its possible occurrences [Wittgenstein]
23465 The 'form' of an object is its possible roles in facts [Wittgenstein]
12443 Can an unactualized possible have self-identity, and be distinct from other possibles? [Quine]
9203 We can't quantify in modal contexts, because the modality depends on descriptions, not objects [Quine, by Fine,K]
11965 Could possible Adam gradually transform into Noah, and vice versa? [Chisholm]
14651 What Socrates could have been, and could have become, are different? [Plantinga]
16993 If we discuss what might have happened to Nixon, we stipulate that it is about Nixon [Kripke]
16998 Transworld identification is unproblematic, because we stipulate that we rigidly refer to something [Kripke]
17001 A table in some possible world should not even be identified by its essential properties [Kripke]
4952 Identification across possible worlds does not need properties, even essential ones [Kripke]
11982 If possible Socrates differs from actual Socrates, the Indiscernibility of Identicals says they are different [Plantinga]
11983 It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos [Plantinga]
11985 If individuals can only exist in one world, then they can never lack any of their properties [Plantinga]
11971 The simplest solution to transworld identification is to adopt bare particulars [Kaplan]
12765 Why imagine that Babe Ruth might be a billiard ball; nothing useful could be said about the ball [Stalnaker]
14072 Possible worlds identity needs a sortal [Gibbard]
14078 Only concepts, not individuals, can be the same across possible worlds [Gibbard]
12011 Transworld identity concerns the limits of possibility for ordinary things [Forbes,G]
12016 The problem of transworld identity can be solved by individual essences [Forbes,G]
13725 □ must be sensitive as to whether it picks out an object by essential or by contingent properties [Fitting/Mendelsohn]
13731 Objects retain their possible properties across worlds, so a bundle theory of them seems best [Fitting/Mendelsohn]
15377 Definite descriptions pick out different objects in different possible worlds [Fitting]
13081 Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
12235 Necessity of identity seems trivial, because it leaves out the real essence [Oderberg]
13717 Transworld identity is not a problem in de dicto sentences, which needn't identify an individual [Sider]
15176 The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle]
12889 The limits of change for an individual depend on the kind of individual [Simons]
11887 Transworld identity without individual essences leads to 'bare identities' [Mackie,P]