Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Topics', 'In Defense of Essentialism' and 'Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

10. Modality / A. Necessity / 6. Logical Necessity
Reasoning is when some results follow necessarily from certain claims [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Reasoning [sullogismos] is a discussion in which, certain things having been laid down, something other than these things necessarily results through them.
     From: Aristotle (Topics [c.331 BCE], 100a25)
     A reaction: This is cited as the standard statement of the nature of logical necessity. One might challenge either the very word 'necessary', or the exact sense of the word employed here. Is it, in fact, metaphysical, or merely analytic?
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 2. Nature of Possible Worlds / a. Nature of possible worlds
'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds [Paul,LA]
     Full Idea: A 'modal realist' believes that there are many concrete worlds, while the 'actualist' believes in only one concrete world, the actual world. The 'ersatzist' is an actualist who takes nonactual possible worlds and their contents to be abstracta.
     From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro)
     A reaction: My view is something like that modal realism is wrong, and actualism is right, and possible worlds (if they really are that useful) are convenient abstract fictions, constructed (if we have any sense) out of the real possibilities in the actual world.