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Single Idea 14678

[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism ]

Full Idea

By admitting possible worlds of unlimited variation and recombination, I simply abandon true metaphysical essentialism. By my lights, any property is attached to anything in some possible world or other. I am a closet radical anti-essentialist.

Gist of Idea

Any property is attached to anything in some possible world, so I am a radical anti-essentialist

Source

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

Book Ref

Salmon,Nathan: 'Metaphysics, Mathematics and Meaning' [OUP 2005], p.134

A Reaction

Salmon includes impossible worlds within his scheme of understanding. It strikes me that this is metaphysical system which tells us nothing about how things are: it is sort of 'logical idealist'. Later he talks of 'we essentialists'.

The 27 ideas from 'The Logic of What Might Have Been'

14669 For metaphysics, T may be the only correct system of modal logic [Salmon,N]
14667 System B has not been justified as fallacy-free for reasoning on what might have been [Salmon,N]
14668 In B it seems logically possible to have both p true and p is necessarily possibly false [Salmon,N]
14670 Metaphysical (alethic) modal logic concerns simple necessity and possibility (not physical, epistemic..) [Salmon,N]
14671 What is necessary is not always necessarily necessary, so S4 is fallacious [Salmon,N]
14674 Impossible worlds are also ways for things to be [Salmon,N]
14672 Possible worlds are maximal abstract ways that things might have been [Salmon,N]
14675 Possible worlds just have to be 'maximal', but they don't have to be consistent [Salmon,N]
14673 You can't define worlds as sets of propositions, and then define propositions using worlds [Salmon,N]
14676 Nomological necessity is expressed with intransitive relations in modal semantics [Salmon,N]
14678 Any property is attached to anything in some possible world, so I am a radical anti-essentialist [Salmon,N]
14677 Metaphysical necessity is said to be unrestricted necessity, true in every world whatsoever [Salmon,N]
14679 Bizarre identities are logically but not metaphysically possible, so metaphysical modality is restricted [Salmon,N]
14681 Logical necessity is free of constraints, and may accommodate all of S5 logic [Salmon,N]
14680 Logical possibility contains metaphysical possibility, which contains nomological possibility [Salmon,N]
14682 Denial of impossible worlds involves two different confusions [Salmon,N]
14687 Without impossible worlds, how things might have been is the only way for things to be [Salmon,N]
14683 Possible worlds rely on what might have been, so they can' be used to define or analyse modality [Salmon,N]
14689 Necessity and possibility are not just necessity and possibility according to the actual world [Salmon,N]
14690 In the S5 account, nested modalities may be unseen, but they are still there [Salmon,N]
14685 Metaphysical necessity is NOT truth in all (unrestricted) worlds; necessity comes first, and is restricted [Salmon,N]
14684 A world is 'accessible' to another iff the first is possible according to the second [Salmon,N]
14688 Without impossible worlds, the unrestricted modality that is metaphysical has S5 logic [Salmon,N]
14686 S5 modal logic ignores accessibility altogether [Salmon,N]
14691 S5 believers say that-things-might-have-been-that-way is essential to ways things might have been [Salmon,N]
14692 System B implies that possibly-being-realized is an essential property of the world [Salmon,N]
14693 The unsatisfactory counterpart-theory allows the retention of S5 [Salmon,N]