display all the ideas for this combination of texts
7 ideas
| 18745 | A Tarskian model can be seen as a possible state of affairs [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| Full Idea: A Tarskian model can in a sense be seen as a model of a possible state of affairs. | |
| From: Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R (Mathematical Methods in Philosophy [2014], 3) | |
| A reaction: I include this remark to show how possible worlds semantics built on the arrival of model theory. |
| 18747 | The 'spheres model' was added to possible worlds, to cope with counterfactuals [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a possible worlds model was extended (resulting in the concept of a 'spheres model') in order to obtain a satisfactory logical treatment of counterfactual conditional sentences. | |
| From: Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R (Mathematical Methods in Philosophy [2014], 4) | |
| A reaction: Thus we add 'centred' worlds, and an 'actual' world, to the loose original model. It is important to remember when we discuss 'close' worlds that we are then committed to these presuppositions. |
| 18748 | Epistemic logic introduced impossible worlds [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| Full Idea: The idea of 'impossible worlds' was introduced into epistemic logic. | |
| From: Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R (Mathematical Methods in Philosophy [2014], 4) | |
| A reaction: Nathan Salmon seems interested in their role in metaphysics (presumably in relation to Meinongian impossible objects, like circular squares, which must necessarily be circular). |
| 18746 | Possible worlds models contain sets of possible worlds; this is a large metaphysical commitment [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| Full Idea: Each possible worlds model contains a set of possible worlds. For this reason, possible worlds semantics is often charged with smuggling in heavy metaphysical commitments. | |
| From: Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R (Mathematical Methods in Philosophy [2014], 3) | |
| A reaction: To a beginner it looks very odd that you should try to explain possibility by constructing a model of it in terms of 'possible' worlds. |
| 18750 | Using possible worlds for knowledge and morality may be a step too far [Horsten/Pettigrew] |
| Full Idea: When the possible worlds semantics were further extended to model notions of knowledge and of moral obligation, the application was beginning to look distinctly forced and artificial. | |
| From: Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R (Mathematical Methods in Philosophy [2014], 5) | |
| A reaction: They accept lots of successes in modelling necessity and time. |
| 17208 | A horse would be destroyed if it were changed into a man or an insect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A horse would as much be destroyed if it were changed into a man as if it were changed into an insect. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: He has been referring to essences of things. What if a shire horse is changed into a Shetland pony? If you watched the horse transmute, it would be continuous in a way that two separate creatures are not. Some sort of sameness there. |
| 17209 | A thing is contingent if nothing in its essence determines whether or not it exists [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I call individual things contingent in so far as we discover nothing, whilst we attend to their essence alone, which necessarily posits their existence or which necessarily excludes it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Def 3) | |
| A reaction: So something could have an essence which determined that it could not exist, which is presumably a contradiction. That's a very strange sort of essence. Presumably all intrinsically contradictory essences are in some way the same. |