Actuality for Counterpart Theorists

Mind 122 (485):85-134 (2013)
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Abstract

The counterpart theorist has a problem: there is no obvious way to understand talk about actuality in terms of counterparts. Fara and Williamson have charged that this obstacle cannot be overcome. Here I defend the counterpart theorist by offering systematic interpretations of a quantified modal language that includes an actuality operator. Centrally, I disentangle the counterpart relation from a related notion, a ‘representation relation’. The relation of possible things to the actual things they represent is variable, and an adequate account of modal language must keep track of the way it is systematically shifted by modal operators. I apply my account to resolve several puzzles about counterparts and actuality. In technical appendices, I prove some important logical results about this ‘representational’ counterpart system and its relationship to other modal systems

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Jeffrey Sanford Russell
University of Southern California

Citations of this work

Quantification and Epistemic Modality.Dilip Ninan - 2018 - Philosophical Review 127 (4):433-485.
Self‐Location and Other‐Location.Dilip Ninan - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (1):301-331.
Possible Worlds and the Objective World.Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (2):389-422.
Haecceitism.Sam Cowling - 2015 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Contingent Identity.Wolfgang Schwarz - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (5):486-495.

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References found in this work

On the Plurality of Worlds.David K. Lewis - 1986 - Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
The Nature of Necessity.Alvin Plantinga - 1974 - Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
On the Plurality of Worlds.David Lewis - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (3):388-390.
A New Introduction to Modal Logic.M. J. Cresswell & G. E. Hughes - 1996 - New York: Routledge. Edited by M. J. Cresswell.
Counterpart theory and quantified modal logic.David Lewis - 1968 - Journal of Philosophy 65 (5):113-126.

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