Combining Texts

Ideas for 'reports', 'Potentiality' and 'The Big Book of Concepts'

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

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


3 ideas

10. Modality / A. Necessity / 2. Nature of Necessity
The modern revival of necessity and possibility treated them as special cases of quantification [Vetter]
     Full Idea: Necessity and possibility had a revival with the development of modal logic, treating them as special cases of the existential and universal quantifiers, ranging over an infinity of possible worlds.
     From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1)
     A reaction: The problem seems to be that possible worlds offer a very useful and interesting 'model' of modality, but say nothing at all about its nature. Any more than a weather map will show you what weather is.
It is necessary that p means that nothing has the potentiality for not-p [Vetter]
     Full Idea: Necessities mark the limits of the potentialities that objects have. More precisely, it is necessary that p just in case nothing has, or had, or will have a potentiality to be such that not-p.
     From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2)
     A reaction: [See Vetter's other ideas for her potentiality account of modality] If we wish to build a naturalistic account of modality (and if you don't want that then your untethered metaphysics will drift away in logical space) then this is the way to go.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 8. Transcendental Necessity
Even the gods cannot strive against necessity [Pittacus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Even the gods cannot strive against necessity.
     From: report of Pittacus (reports [c.610 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 01.5.4