(1a) If Prince Albert Victor killed those people, he is Jack the Ripper (and Jack the Ripper killed those people). (1b) If Prince Albert Victor had killed those people, Jack the Ripper wouldn't have (and Prince Albert wouldn't have been Jack the Ripper).

Almost everyone believes in modality de dicto. Necessarily, puppies are young dogs. The necessity here derives from the meaning of “puppy.” The term means young dog. Essentialism is belief in a more exotic sort of modality, one that does not derive from meaning in this direct and simple way. In the first two sections of this paper, I consider indexical and nonindexical kind terms and the sort of modality applicable to each. In the last section, I consider individuals and proper (...) names. (shrink)

The view that analytic propositions are those which are true in virtue of rules of use is basically correct. But there are many kinds of rules of use, and rules of some of these kinds do not generate truth. There is nothing like a grammatical analytic, though grammatical rules are rules of use. So, this rules-of-use view falls short of being an explanatory account. My problem is to find what it is that is special about those rules of use which (...) do generate truth. I shall argue that they are distinguished from others by their purpose rather than their content. Given their special purpose, one can explain how they generate truth. It will follow that linguistic regularities, considered apart from the purposes of those who use language, fail to provide a basis for understanding analyticity. On my account of it, analyticity turns out to be a less important characteristic of propositions than necessity. This is be- cause necessity, unlike analyticity, has its roots, not just in a contemporary system of usage, but in a wide family of systems of belief and usage. My efforts to deflate the philosophical value of the analytic will be summed up in the conclusion that analytic propositions can be contingent. I think this conclusion is behind the feeling that the propositions of logic and arithmetic are not merely analytic. For, if they were merely analytic, that is, true only in virtue of transitory conventions, then they would be contingent. Justice can be done to this feeling by the view that they are both analytic and necessary. (shrink)

The paper replies to an earlier paper by Yannis Stephanou, who presented an argument purportedly showing the falsity of certain instances of the characteristic axiom of the modal logic B. The paper argues that the B axiom was not to blame for the unsoundness of Stephanou's argument.

Possibility offers a new analysis of the metaphysical concepts of possibility and necessity, one that does not rely on any sort of "possible worlds." The analysis proceeds from an account of the notion of a physical object and from the positing of properties and relations. It is motivated by considerations about how we actually speak of and think of objects. Michael Jubien discusses several closely related topics, including different purported varieties of possible worlds, the doctrine of "essentialism," natural kind terms (...) and alleged examples of necessity a posteriori. The book also offers a new theory of the functioning of proper names, both actual and fictional, and the discussion of natural kind terms and necessity a posteriori depends in part on this theory. (shrink)

Quentin Smith argues that if God exists, He had a duty to ensure life's existence; and He couldn't rationally have done so and made a big bang unless a counter-factual like "If God had made a big bang, there would have been life," was true pre-creation. But such counter-factuals are not true pre-creation. I argue that God could have made a big bang without irrationality; and that He could have ensured life without making big bangs non-random. Further, a proper understanding (...) of the truth-conditions of counter-factuals like the one above lets them have determinate truth-values pre-creation. But the explanation of how the above counter-factual can be true pre-creation is more complicated than that offered by William Lane Craig. (shrink)

Perhaps no one has done more in the last 30 years to advance thinking in the metaphysics of modality than has Alvin Plantinga. Collected here are some of his most important essays on this influential subject. Dating back from the late 1960's to the present, they chronicle the development of Plantinga's thoughts about some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics: what is the nature of abstract objects like possible worlds, properties, propositions, and such phenomena? Are there possible but non-actual (...) objects? Can objects that do not exist exemplify properties? Plantinga gives thorough and penetrating to all of these questions and many others. This volume contains some of the best work in metaphysics from the past 30 years, and will remain a source of critical contention and keen interest among philosophers of metaphysics and philosophical logic for years to come. (shrink)

Attention to the conversational role of alethic terms seems to dominate, and even sometimes exhaust, many contemporary analyses of the nature of truth. Yet, because truth plays a role in judgment and assertion regardless of whether alethic terms are expressly used, such analyses cannot be comprehensive or fully adequate. A more general analysis of the nature of truth is therefore required – one which continues to explain the significance of truth independently of the role alethic terms play in discourse. We (...) undertake such an analysis in this paper; in particular, we start with certain elements from Kant and Frege, and develop a construct of truth as a normative modality of cognitive acts (e.g., thought, judgment, assertion). Using the various biconditional T-schemas to sanction the general passage from assertions to (equivalent) assertions of truth, we then suggest that an illocutionary analysis of truth can contribute to its locutionary analysis as well, including the analysis of diverse constructions involving alethic terms that have been largely overlooked in the philosophical literature. Finally, we briefly indicate the importance of distinguishing between alethic and epistemic modalities. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are true synthetic modal claims and that modal questions in philosophy are to be interpreted not in terms of logical necessity but in terms of synthetic necessity. I begin by sketching the debate about modality between logical empiricism and phenome-nology. Logical empiricism taught us to equate analyticity and neces-sity. The now common view is that analytic statements are necessary in the narrow sense but that there is also necessity in a wider sense. I argue against (...) this that we should distinguish analyticity and necessity more strictly. (shrink)

Materialists who do not deny the existence of mental phenomena usually claim that the mental supervenes on the physical, i.e. that there cannot be a change in the mental life of a man without there being a change in the man's body. This modal claim is usually understood in terms of logical necessity. I argue that this is a mistake, resulting from assumptions inherited from logical empiricism, and that it should be understood in terms of synthetic necessity.

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 89, Issue 4, Page 755-756, December 2011.