Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Guide to Ground' and 'fragments/reports'

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4 ideas

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 1. Possibility
A proposition is possible if it is true when nothing stops it being true [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: That proposition is possible which admits of being true, if external factors do not prevent it from being true, for example, 'Diocles is alive'.
     From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.75
     A reaction: Well that's different. So every unprevented possibility will occur tomorrow. Any possibility that does not occur tomorrow must have been prevented in some way. Whatever does occur prevents innumerable other things from occurring. Your turn…
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / c. Truth-function conditionals
Conditionals are false if the falsehood of the conclusion does not conflict with the antecedent [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: A conditional is true if the opposite of the conclusion conflicts with the antecedent, and false if it doesn't conflict. Thus 'If it is day, Dion is walking' is false, because 'Dion is not walking' does not conflict with 'It is day'.
     From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.73
     A reaction: For the two to conflict there must be some connection in subject matter, which is not the case if the mere falsehood of the conclusion (from a true premise) falsifies the conditional. This seems like a rather good account.
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 1. Sources of Necessity
Each basic modality has its 'own' explanatory relation [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: I am inclined to the view that ....each basic modality should be associated with its 'own' explanatory relation.
     From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.01)
     A reaction: He suggests that 'grounding' connects the various explanatory relations of the different modalities. I like this a lot. Why assert any necessity without some concept of where the necessity arises, and hence where it is grounded? You've got to eat.
Every necessary truth is grounded in the nature of something [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: It might be held as a general thesis that every necessary truth is grounded in the nature of certain items.
     From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.11)
     A reaction: [He cites his own 1994 for this] I'm not sure if I can embrace the 'every' in this. I would only say, more cautiously, that I can only make sense of necessity claims when I see their groundings - and I don't take a priori intuition as decent grounding.