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Single Idea 11001

[filed under theme 10. Modality / A. Necessity / 2. Nature of Necessity ]

Full Idea

The equation of 'necessity' with 'true in every possible world' is known as the S5 conception, corresponding to the strongest of C.I.Lewis's five modal systems.

Gist of Idea

Equating necessity with truth in every possible world is the S5 conception of necessity

Source

Stephen Read (Thinking About Logic [1995], Ch.4)

Book Ref

Read,Stephen: 'Thinking About Logic' [OUP 1995], p.118


A Reaction

Are the worlds naturally, or metaphysically, or logically possible?


The 24 ideas with the same theme [understanding the concept of necessity]:

Necessity makes alternatives impossible [Aristotle]
What is necessary cannot be otherwise [Aristotle]
Every necessary proposition is demonstrable to someone who understands [Leibniz]
Necessary truths are those provable from identities by pure logic in finite steps [Leibniz, by Hacking]
Necessity is what will be, despite any alternative suppositions whatever [Mill]
Necessity can only mean what must be, without conditions of any kind [Mill]
Nothing necessary can come into existence, since it already 'is' [Kierkegaard]
Necessity is thought to require an event, but is only an after-effect of the event [Nietzsche]
Something can be irrefutable; that doesn't make it true [Nietzsche]
'Necessary' is a predicate of a propositional function, saying it is true for all values of its argument [Russell]
Modal terms are properties of propositional functions, not of propositions [Russell]
Equating necessity with informal provability is the S4 conception of necessity [Lewis,CI, by Read]
Necessity can attach to statement-names, to statements, and to open sentences [Quine]
Kripke says his necessary a posteriori examples are known a priori to be necessary [Kripke, by Mackie,P]
What reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity [Harré/Madden]
Statements about necessities need not be necessarily true [Pollock]
Absolute necessity might be achievable either logically or metaphysically [Hale]
Equating necessity with truth in every possible world is the S5 conception of necessity [Read]
We may be sure that P is necessary, but is it necessarily necessary? [Melia]
A sentence is necessary if it is true in a set of worlds, and nonfalse in the other worlds [Hanna]
Maybe necessity is a predicate, not the usual operator, to make it more like truth [Halbach]
Scotus based modality on semantic consistency, instead of on what the future could allow [Walicki]
The modern revival of necessity and possibility treated them as special cases of quantification [Vetter]
It is necessary that p means that nothing has the potentiality for not-p [Vetter]