His argument feels like a construction for a pre-determined outcome — Ludwig V

Like most such arguments.

Hear, here.

It may be. However the penchant for a modal ontological argument gives me pause.

I agree that a State of Affairs can only capture one moment in time, — RussellA

maybe take care here, too. Why shouldn't a state of affairs list the positions some object occupies over time? As, 'The ball rolled east at 2m/s'?

Meta would have to disagree with this, because he can't make sense of instantaneous velocity, or of calculus or any sort of limit or infinitesimal in general. See the Christmas Cracker above, where Meta treats change as a series of static instances rather than as dynamic, and as a result discovers that motion is impossible. :wink:

Change cannot be reduced to a sequence of instantaneous states - but no one is claiming that.

Obviously the problem cannot be expressed in formal logic, because the nature of the problem is that it renders the formal logic as fundamentally unsound. — Metaphysician Undercover

:rofl:

If your argument cannot be expressed clearly, then the obvious implication is that it is unsound. Again, S4 and S5 and derivatives have been shown to be complete and consistent. You appear to be simply wrong here.

The demonstration is like this. If the world is describable as state A, and then it becomes state B, we can conclude that change occurred between A and B, We could then assume a state C as the intermediary between A and B and describe the change as state C, but this would imply that change occurred between A and C, and also between C and B. We could posit state D between A and C, and state E between C and B, but we would still have the same problem again. As you can see, this indicates an infinite regress, and we never get to the point of understanding what change, activity, or motion, really is. Activity, change, motion, is what occurs between states of affairs, when one becomes the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

:lol: Have you thought of going in to writing the jokes for Christmas crackers?

"Actual" reality is simply stipulated, even Banno accepts this, as indicated below. — Metaphysician Undercover

What twaddle.

Ok. We need to keep the quantification in line - again, there is a difference between any apple and a particular apple and the apple I didn't eat need not be any particular apple. So is

...the proposition “the apple might be on the table” is true because there might be an apple on the table, — RussellA

About a particular apple or not? Is it that there might be an apple - any apple - on the table, or that some particular apple is on the table? And then how, if it is possible that the apple is on the table, do we understand the haecceity of the apple being on the table but not the apple?

All this by way of mostly agreeing with you. Including the suspicion that Plantinga is misled by his faith.

Suppose the properties that comprise an individual essence is comprised of this maximal set: 100% of the individual's intrinsic and relational properties at every point it time that it exists. There is a relation to everything that exists in this world, and therefore the set of possible worlds in which the individual exists is just the one: the actual world. I suggest this is the base case - because it does clearly identify an individual. — Relativist

Nice.

Such an individual immediately brings about modal collapse, since p→☐p. What we have is further reason of rejection the notion of essence as resulting in incoherence.

A haeecity is an essence, or at least an essential property (a component of an essence). — Relativist

We need to take care here.

Here is a way in to talk about essences that make sense: the essence of some individual is those properties that it has in every possible world in which it exists.

Here's a way to talk about essences that is somewhat obtuse: the essence of something is that which makes it what it is and not another thing.

Here's a complication on the latter: we can call the thing that makes something what it is, its haecceity... And the italics are there to mark the hypostatization, the presumption that what makes a thing what it is, is yet another thing...

Muddle on muddle, compounded mud.

Nevertheless, it seems to me a possible world in which you eat a different apple depends on kind-essentialism - the essence of what an apple is. — Relativist

How to make sense of this? A possible world in which I didn't eat a different apple to the one I didn't eat for breakfast? :chin:

I didn't eat an apple for breakfast, and yet it's not the case that this is the apple that I didn't eat for breakfast. Plantinga wants this to be the apple I didn't eat - he wants there to be a particular uneaten apple in some possible world.

Plantinga would respond that haecceities are primitive - they don't reduce to qualitative properties (including kind-properties). But this makes transworld identity mysterious; he inevitably smuggles in kind-essences when reasoning about counterfactuals.


The apple is an apple, with no need for essence or haecceity or other bloody philosophical obfuscation. And there is no particular apple that I didn't eat for breakfast, despite my not having eaten an apple for breakfast.

For Plantinga, individuals are identified across worlds by their haecceities, not by their kind membership, a “different apple” in another world isn’t just a different instance of the same kind; it is a different haecceity. The semantic machinery that lets us say “I could have eaten this apple” relies on the haecceity of the apple, even if it is unexemplified in that world.

Your reading of Plantinga is through a kind-essentialist lens: i.e., the identity of transworld apples is determined primarily by kind. Plantinga’s haecceity-essentialism is individual-specific, not kind-specific. It’s not “an apple of kind K in another world,” it’s “the very same apple’s haecceity in another world,” which may or may not be instantiated.

So do you conflate kind-essentialism with individual (haecceity) essentialism? Plantinga’s machinery is much more fine-grained, tracking this very apple, not “an apple of the same kind.”

Basically his use of haecceities looks to me to be reworking the problem rather than solving it.

Is it a mental state? — frank

No. The apple can't be a mere mental state because we are now each talking about the very same apple, and your mental states are not my mental states.

It has to be something shared, or at least public.

My view isn't all that firm yet, but I've mentioned to @Ludwig V that I think all three views suffer from the same error in that they presume maximally complete worlds. I don't see that as needed, and what follows might be a more ad hoc and constructive approach.

We talk as if there were an apple. That's just one of the many games we play with words. And that's related to the counts as... stuff from Searle; we just do talk about apples in this way, like we talk about property and credit, none of which are things in the way the apple in the fruit bowl is.

I'll have a bit of a bitch about Plantinge awhile we are here.

It seems to me that Plantiga takes a way of talking and turns it into a thing. Suppose I say that I might have had an apple for breakfast. Plantinga would say that the apple I might have had necessarily has a thing that makes it what it is, and that this thing is what I might have had for breakfast. It would be ridiculous to say that there is an apple that I might have had for breakfast, and Plantinga tries to avoid the ridicule by replacing that apple with a haecceity-of-apple, as if that were any better.

Perhaps something like this sits behind @Metaphysician Undercover's confusion, or @Relativist's disquiet. Something like it seems to underpin the essentialism that the forum Thomists misuse.

Yep.

Yep. We might be clearer about Plantinga’s view. It's not primarily about properties like “being an apple”. It is about individual essences (haecceities). For Plantinga very individual has a haecceity (e.g. being that very apple), and haecceities exist necessarily, and oddly it seems worlds contain haecceities whether or not they are exemplified. So in a world where the apple does not exist, the haecceity "being that apple" exists, and is unexemplified. That haecceity is what does the semantic work for quantification.

All of which looks quite contrived to my eye. Not keen on Plantiga's approach.

For Trace Actualists, things in possible worlds can exist. This allows the modal semantics of (23) ◇∃xEx is true if there is a world in which ∃xEx — RussellA

Isn't it more that ◇∃xEx is true if there is an accessible world in which ∃xEx can be represented? Roughly, if we can posit, or perhaps talk abuot some world in which ∃xEx?

See how the sentence you keep quoting begins with "Say that...".

Why?

Here's the whole paragraph:

On the assumption that there is a (nonempty) set of all possible worlds and a set of all possible individuals, we can define “objective” notions of truth at a world and of truth simpliciter, that is, notions that are not simply relative to formal, mathematical interpretations but, rather, correspond to objective reality in all its modal glory. Let ℒ be a modal language whose names and predicates represent those in some fragment of ordinary language (as in our examples (5) and (6) above). Say that M is the “intended” interpretation of ℒ if (i) its set W of “possible worlds” is in fact the set of all possible worlds, (ii) its designated “actual world” is in fact the actual world, (iii) its set D of “possible individuals” is in fact the set of all possible individuals, and (iv) the referents assigned to the names of ℒ and the intensions assigned to the predicates of ℒ are the ones they in fact have. Then, where M is the intended interpretation of ℒ, we can say that a sentence φ of ℒ is true at a possible world w just in case φ is trueM at w, and that φ is true just in case it is trueM at the actual world. (Falsity at w and falsity, simpliciter, are defined accordingly.) Under the assumption in question, then, the modal clause above takes on pretty much the exact form of our informal principle Nec. — SEP

See how the single line you quote is part two of four of the antecedent of a mooted definition of true-in-M that is being true in any arbitrarily selected world. The conclusion is the opposite of what you suggest: any world might have been chosen to take on the place of the actual world, with the same result.

For those reading on, Meta isolates (ii) (“its designated ‘actual world’ is in fact the actual world”) and treats it as if it were doing independent semantic work. That is a mistake.

Again, there Might be a point Meta could be making, but his utter inability to understand and use the formal logic here incapacitates his expressing his view. Meta might be gesturing at a familiar philosophical concern, namely that the appeal to an “intended model” smuggles metaphysics into what is advertised as a purely semantic account. To make that objection, Meta would have to distinguish object-language truth conditions from metasemantic stipulations, recognise the difference between fixing a model and evaluating formulas within it, and understand how conditional definitions work in formal semantics. There may be a point Meta could be making, but his inability to understand and use the formal logic prevents him from expressing it.

You seem to want to focus on one, the abstractionist interpretation, as if it is the only acceptable interpretation — Metaphysician Undercover

No, Meta. I haven't moved past it because i keep answering your silly quibbles. My bad, yes, i should go back to ignoring you.

Cheers.

Note the correction. I was trying to be too general. Truthmaker theory is my theory of choice. It is correspondence, but in general it is not deflationary. — Relativist

Why, when the article we are reading clearly uses the semantic theory, and with good reason, is this even worth mentioning? I prefer pistachio nougat - but it's not relevant to this thread.

I don't require those numbers to be correct for this point to stand — AmadeusD

:grin:

"Anecdotal evidence reliable? One man says 'yes!'"

Seems to me that the history of 'civilization' has always treated those with disabilities as if they did not belong in the same places as 'normal' people. — creativesoul

I gave evidence earlier that this is not quite so; it's a relatively recent development, consequent on the development of the modern medical system.

I don't know how to reply to that. It's not clear to me where you want to go with what you have said.

Correspondence is not a deflationary theory of truth. Tarksi is compatible with any theory of truth worthy of consideration. Whether it counts as a deflationary theory is a subject of some considerable discussion, but Tarksi thought not.

I don't see how introducing yet another theory - truth makers - is illuminating.

Can we move on?

For the read-through, I think we are up to 2.2.3 Actuality and Actualism.

This thread was set up specifically to work through the two articles. Look:

This thread is for a read through of two SEP articles on possibility and actuality. — frank

I've said previously that before we embark on a critique of the implications of possible world semantics, we need both a strong grasp of modal logic and an understanding of the main theories concerning its application. That's what I have been doing. I don't think what you have said demonstrates such a grasp on your part.

Again, it seems to me that what you are doing is attempting to critique modal theory, which is based on semantic theories of truth, by replacing that basis with a correspondence theory. It's no surprise that this doesn't work.

I'm more than happy to consider the consequences of possible world semantics. Indeed, with others here, we have been doing just that. But not by first misunderstanding it.

Are you a proponent of virtue ethics? — Jeremy Murray

Sometimes. Ethics is not algorithmic.

Hard to figure out what you're talking about. — AmadeusD

Well, yes - you'd have to change your mind... :wink:

Wouldn't it benefit your organisation to find out why it hasn't attracted anyone, over the last twenty years, who needed an accessible toilet? There's a large part of the population that you are not accessing.

This definition is neutral in terms of the social and medical model. — bert1

It is a classic, straight-forward example of the Medical Model.

The Equality Act definition makes disability depend on "an impairment (physical or mental)", and
the "effects of that impairment on the person’s abilities". It sets up disability as something that is wrong with the person. And is "normal day-to-day activities" is explicitly normative, treating deviation from that baseline as a deficit in the individual. As so often, the law adopts a medical model for pragmatic reasons.

That's not just my view. A quick search will find Parliamentary enquiries and academic papers pointing to this issue.

The social model sees disability as when society’s structures, attitudes, and practices create barriers that prevent folk from fully participating in social, economic, and cultural life, regardless of their physical or mental differences. Disability is not caused by the person’s impairment, but by the mismatch between the person and the environment.

The capabilities model sees a person as disabled to the extent that they are unable to achieve or exercise the essential capabilities necessary for living a life they value, due to a combination of personal, social, and environmental factors. Disability is understood not solely as an impairment, but as a constraint on the real opportunities (“capabilities”) available to the person.

If a fish jumps out of the water and land on the path and starts exhibiting challenging behaviour, the medical model would have us fit it with artificial lungs and a trolley at great taxpayer expense. Proponents of the social model will pop it back in the water where it is not disabled. — bert1

Yep.

As usual. you reject my arguments because they are inconsistent with what you believe, without even addressing the the truth or falsity of the premises, or the validity of the argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nuh. I reject your arguments because they are muddled.

Take:

Possibilities are infinite, so we cannot have "the set of all possible worlds", as required for the truth conditions. That is impossible because any proposed set will be incomplete. We will never have the true actual world (M), therefore the stated truth conditions for possible worlds semantics are necessarily violated, truth cannot be obtained. — Metaphysician Undercover

It contains at least a half-dozen compounding errors. There are infinite sets, and indeed uncountably infinite sets; and we can give truth conditions for those sets. Consider ℕ and ℝ. These sets are not "incomplete" - you trade on an ambiguity here. M is not the actual world, as you think, but an interpretation of a modal system. A model M is an ordered structure ⟨W, R, V⟩, and the actual world is a distinguished element w∈W. Kripke prooved that K, T, S4, and S5 are both complete and consistent, so truth can be "obtained" (your term) for those systems.

You are still looking for epistemic truth in a semantic system.

You haven't followed what is going on in the SEP articles.

I was referring to a correspondence theory of truth. — Relativist

Indeed, but very clearly what is being used in modal logic is a semantic theory of truth.

...you've been referring to indexicality, which is beyond Tarski. — Relativist

Well, we can use Kaplan's account, if you like. It's an extension of the semantic theory of truth that does deal with indexicals.

This actually does apply to correspondence theory, which is deflationary. Deflationary theories are based on the equivalence principle: — Relativist

Nuh. It's not deflationary. It's very much one of the substantive theories of truth.

The core problem with what you are saying seems to be that you are trying to use the correspondence theory in the place of the semantic theory, and bumping up against the problems this causes.

, , keep in mind that a rigid designator only refers to an individual in those possible worlds in which that individual exists.

If Homer didn't exist, then "Homer" doesn't refer to anyone.

Yep. Bullshit.

The question of what establishes the truth of a statement then depends on which definition of truth is being used. — RussellA

And the one being used in the article is Tarski’s Truth Definition.

I brought the topic up, in my innocence. — Ludwig V

It's good - it brought out another aspect into my response to the article. The SEP article presumes maximally complete worlds, but the logical work these theories are actually used for does not require maximality.

Perhaps we don't need a theory about the nature of possible worlds in order to use modal logic to regiment modal discourse. An open rather than a close approach.

So....treating it as a possible world, even though it's not possible. — Relativist

What, exactly, is not possible?

Doing what you suggest is inconsistent with correspondence theory of truth - the Frodo statement is not "true" under this theory. — Relativist

Have you an argument to go along with that? And what of it - we are using Tarski's semantics, not correspondence.

I probably should not have mentioned the fiction argument at present. It works by rejecting maximal consistency, which has it's own consequences. They may be treated as partial, consistent worlds. Poor pedagogy on my part. But it's were we might go....

Yes. But the causal chain is a chain of people learning to refer to Aristotle correctly. Isn't it? What else could it be?
— Ludwig V

Yep, and we need not be referring anybody or anything at all for it to be meaningful, as Wittgenstein said we must not confound the meaning of a name with the bearer of the name. — Richard B

The word "learning" is problematic. It'd be better to say "the causal chain is a chain of people using the name to refer to Aristotle correctly.

“Learning” smuggles in a representational picture: as if what is transmitted along the chain is a mental grasp of an object. That’s exactly the picture Wittgenstein is trying to loosen. On his later view, what is transmitted is not knowledge of a bearer but participation in a practice. Hence my suggestion.

So each world serves as the origin of its transworld identifications. Which world is the origin depends on which world we are in. Each world is the actual world in that world. — Ludwig V

Yep.

...a story about a real or possible person in our world might well count as a possibility and what you say here wouldn't apply. — Ludwig V

Yes, I think so. The point - lost on some - is that the logic is much the same.

What about stories that mix real and fictional characters and/or places? — Ludwig V

That'd just make yet another possible world, with some characters in common with our own...?

I, on the other hand, don't know what I'm talking about. — Ludwig V

That you do not have at hand a definite description of Aristotle does not make your reference fail. The person you are mistaken about is Aristotle... the reference still works, even in near-complete ignorance. Indeed, there are examples in the literature of reference working in complete ignorance.

Maybe have a read of section X of Donnellan's Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions - the Thales example.

Yep.

Jamal was very generous with giving Bob enough rope. The result was inevitable.

While what you say is mostly correct, his views were in the end small and nasty.

1. What you learnt about Aristotle enables you to refer to Aristotle - to use the tag. — Ludwig V

No!

What you learned is irrelevant. You heard someone use the word Aristotle, and you started to use the word; and crucially, you would be talking about Aristotle even if what you think you know about him were completely wrong.

(Remember - what preserves the causal chain is people using the tag.) — Ludwig V

Yes! And that alone!

If you overheard the bloke on the TV say that Aristotle Taught Alexander, and assumed he meant that Aristotle taught Alexander Graham Bell, and that was all you knew about Aristotle, you would be mistaken, and importantly, you would be mistaken about Aristotle. The reference works despite all you know about Aristotle being wrong.

So its not "What you learnt about Aristotle enables you to refer to Aristotle"!

the inferences are all qualified by, "within Tolkien's fictional world...". — Relativist

Yep - treating it as a possible world, and truth as true-in-a-world.

The book establishes a fiction. We could examine this fictional world for coherence, and draw valid inferences if (and only if) it is, but the inferences are all qualified by, "within Tolkien's fictional world...". But no unqualified objective truths can be inferred. — Relativist

"unqualified" is problematic; we can take this world, the one we are in, to be w₀ and then define truth simpliciter as true-in-w₀. And note thatin w₀ it is true that in Tolkien's world Frodo is a hobbit...

And critically- nothing here establishes the hobbit world (in toto) as anything more than a fiction, so calling it a "possible world" is misleading. — Relativist

Yes. This is a different point, further complicating the issue; that since in the actual world Tolkien developed Frodo as a fictional character, we might decide that Frodo is necessarily a fiction - a fiction in any possible world in which he occurred. What this would mean is that were we to come across a small hairy man with nine fingers who was a friend to the elves and wizards, that would not be Frodo, because he is actual and Frodo is a fiction.

Fun, isn't it?

I don't think so, but I'm not sure...

The idea is somewhat ill-formed, but it's related to the idea that some differences make no difference. I need to think on it some more.

As I've shown... — Metaphysician Undercover

You pretend your already repudiated arguments were adequate. They are not.

If Determinism is true, there can only be one actual world, meaning that there cannot be possible worlds. — RussellA

This rather depends on how one understands "determinism".

Determinism is a thesis about law-governed evolution within a world, not about the space of logically or metaphysically possible worlds. Even a perfectly deterministic world can be one among many possible worlds, perhaps differing in their initial conditions. Determinism only blocks alternative futures for this world, not alternative worlds altogether.