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4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 3. Modal Logic Systems / f. System B

[version imposing two conditions on accessibility]

5 ideas
System B has not been justified as fallacy-free for reasoning on what might have been [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: Even the conventionally accepted system B, which is weaker than S5 and independent of S4, has not been adequately justified as a fallacy-free system of reasoning about what might have been.
     From: Nathan Salmon (The Logic of What Might Have Been [1989], Intro)
In B it seems logically possible to have both p true and p is necessarily possibly false [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: The characteristic of B has the form φ⊃□◊φ. ...Even if these axioms are necessarily true, it seems logically possible for p to be true while the proposition that p is necessarily possible is at the same time false.
     From: Nathan Salmon (The Logic of What Might Have Been [1989], Intro)
System B implies that possibly-being-realized is an essential property of the world [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: Friends of B modal logic commit themselves to the loaded claim that it is logically true that the property of possibly being realized (or being a way things might have been) is an essential property of the world.
     From: Nathan Salmon (The Logic of What Might Have Been [1989], V)
     A reaction: I think this 'loaded' formulation captures quite nicely the dispositional view I favour, that the possibilities of the actual world are built into the actual world, and define its nature just as much as the 'categorial' facts do.
The system B has the 'reflexive' and 'symmetric' conditions on its accessibility relation [Fitting/Mendelsohn]
     Full Idea: The system B has the 'reflexive' and 'symmetric' conditions imposed on its accessibility relation - that is, every world must be accessible to itself, and any relation between worlds must be mutual.
     From: M Fitting/R Mendelsohn (First-Order Modal Logic [1998], 1.8)
System B introduces iterated modalities [Sider]
     Full Idea: With system B we begin to be able to say something about iterated modalities. ..S4 then takes a different stand on the iterated modalities, and neither is an extension of the other.
     From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 6.4.4)