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A powers theory of modality: or, how I learned to stop worrying and reject possible worlds

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Abstract

Possible worlds, concrete or abstract as you like, are irrelevant to the truthmakers for modality—or so I shall argue in this paper. First, I present the neo-Humean picture of modality, and explain why those who accept it deny a common sense view of modality. Second, I present what I take to be the most pressing objection to the neo-Humean account, one that, I argue, applies equally well to any theory that grounds modality in possible worlds. Third, I present an alternative, properties-based theory of modality and explore several specific ways to flesh the general proposal out, including my favored version, the powers theory. And, fourth, I offer a powers semantics for counterfactuals that each version of the properties-based theory of modality can accept, mutatis mutandis. Together with a definition of possibility and necessity in terms of counterfactuals, the powers semantics of counterfactuals generates a semantics for modality that appeals to causal powers and not possible worlds.

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Notes

  1. For a discussion of these issues, see, for example, Armstrong (2004).

  2. Lewis (1994), the most forceful defender of this thesis, calls it Humean Supervenience. One must be careful here. The property-based theorist may very well agree that modal, causal and nomic facts supervene on the distribution of properties in the mosaic. After all, as we shall see, the properties-based theorist conceives of properties as somehow involving such facts in their nature. The Humean Supervenience thesis, instead, claims that all truths supervene on the spatio-temporal distribution of local property instances conceived of as consistent with Independence.

  3. The precise nature of these abstract representations, and therefore how it is that they represent, varies from theory to theory. See Plantinga (1974), Stalnaker (1976), Adams (1974), and Sider (2002) for some alternatives. It is not clear that a neo-Humean can accept just any of the ersatz worlds, since the worlds and the ways they represent might violate Independence, but I shall ignore this worry for present purposes.

  4. There are other, serious problems with counterpart theory that I will not address. Of particular note are the problems raised by Fara and Williamson (2005). If counterpart theory is to capture the richness of our ordinary modal language, it will need an actuality operator in its language. Fara and Williamson display the difficulties in doing so. For an attempt at a response, see the unpublished essay by Sider, “Beyond the Humphrey Objection”.

  5. Plantinga (1974), among others, makes a similar complaint.

  6. Plantinga (1974), for example, is not offering truthmakers for modality.

  7. Though see McDaniel (2004) for a possible exception.

  8. Compare Roy (1993): “Arguably, unless the way other worlds (whatever they may be) are is somehow connected to the actual world, the other worlds will turn out to be irrelevant to modal truths about things in the actual world,” Fitch (1996): “If there are any worlds of the sort Lewis describes, their existence seems irrelevant to the analysis of our concept of possibility,” and Jubien (2007): possible worlds “cannot reasonably be thought to be relevant to modality as we typically take it, and their irrelevance was merely veiled by the decision to call them possible worlds.”

  9. Mondadori and Morton (1976), Roy (1993), and Jubien (2007) make similar arguments, with differing targets and to differing effects.

  10. Conversation with Tim Pawl and Scott Berman helped me see this point.

  11. This is independent of issues concerning what natural properties there are. If height and weight and so on reduce to natural, microphysical properties, it is such micro-physical properties that ground modality.

  12. But do not confuse such properties with the world properties of Stalnaker (1976). The properties that ground modality according to the properties-based theory are normal properties of concrete particulars and the relations between them. As Mondadori and Morton (1976) put it, “modal properties are not in their nature different from any other properties.”

  13. “The metaphysically necessary truths can then be identified with the propositions which are true in virtue of the nature of all objects whatever.”

  14. “It is metaphysically necessary that p iff there are some features ϕ, ψ, … such that it is true in virtue of what it is to ϕ, what it is to ψ,… that p.”

  15. It is possible that there be ϕs, though in fact there aren’t any, because “[i]t is possible that some plurality of things in the past, under suitable counterfactual conditions, give rise to novel instances of ϕ by way of generating them.”

  16. Compare Roy (1993): “the truth values of modal statements are determined relative to the actual structures of nonmodal properties.”

  17. See also Fales (1993).

  18. Bird (2007) says that because dispositions involve modality, this “opens up the possibility of a dispositional account of modality … [D]etails await development.” I aim to herein provide those details.

  19. Hence it would seem incorrect to say, as Jubien does, that the resultant view is a “governance” conception of modality. Properties are not governed from without by the relation between them; they are self-governed from within by their own natures.

  20. Versions of this view of properties are defended by, among others, Shoemaker (1980, 1998), Martin (2008), Ellis and Lierse (1994), Ellis (2001), Molnar (2003), Mumford (2004, 2007), Heil (2004, 2005), and Bird (2007).

  21. While Fitch (1996) defends a view he calls Aristotelian actualism, his view invokes possible worlds and hence does not count as Aristotelian in my sense.

  22. Typically, it will be a property complex or collection of properties. If they are capable of jointly exercising their powers in such a way that would bring about A, then A is possible.

  23. John Heil expressed this thought to me in conversation.

  24. I once spent an entire lecture attempting to convince my students that it couldn’t be done. I finally convinced them, not by typical a priori arguments, but by having several of them try to draw one. It was their inability to draw one that convinced them.

  25. Most Aristotelians offer something like the Kripkean response to the appearance of contingency. For two well developed responses, see Bird (2007) and Handfield (2004).

  26. It is, in this way, what Plantinga (1974) calls a depraved semantics, or even what Zimmerman (2005) calls an utterly depraved semantics.

  27. See Lange (2005) for an intriguing suggestion.

  28. For a full discussion, see my “Powerful qualities, not pure powers” (manuscript).

  29. See Kment (2006) for an exception.

  30. Williamson (2007) proves much of the equivalence between counterfactuals and the modalities. While the system I offer is quite similar to Williamson’s, his primary concern is in epistemology.

  31. A similar basic idea is proposed by W. Russ Payne in unpublished work. My own thinking about an alternative semantics for counterfactuals was influenced by Payne’s proposal.

  32. Unpublished manuscript, “Necessitation, Counterfactuals and Modality.”

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David McCarty for his help with the formal aspects of this project. I would also like to thank Timothy O'Connor, Barbara Vetter, Jonathan Stoltz, Marie Feldmeier, Scott Berman and members of audiences at St. Louis University and University of Missouri, St. Louis, for helpful discussions concerning the topics of the paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, St. Louis University, 3800 Lindell Blvd. Humanities Building, 130, St. Louis, MO, 63108, USA

    Jonathan D. Jacobs

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Jacobs, J.D. A powers theory of modality: or, how I learned to stop worrying and reject possible worlds. Philos Stud 151, 227–248 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9427-1

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