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3 ideas
| 16468 | Non-S5 can talk of contingent or necessary necessities [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: One can make sense of necessary versus contingent necessities in a non-S5 modal semantics. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 4.3 n17) | |
| A reaction: In S5 □φ → □□φ, so all necessities are necessary. Does it make any sense to say 'I suppose this might have been necessarily true'? |
| 16449 | In modal set theory, sets only exist in a possible world if that world contains all of its members [Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: One principle of modal set theory should be uncontroversial: a set exists in a given possible world if and only if all of its members exist at that world. | |
| From: Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean there can be no set containing all of my ancestors and future descendants? In no world can we coexist. |
| 13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
| A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |