Modern and Medieval Modal Spaces

Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 94 (1):255-273 (2020)
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Abstract

The interesting question about modality is not about its extension, but about its point. Everyone can agree (for instance) that the past is necessary in the Ockhamist sense but not in some ‘modern’ senses, and that the present is necessary in the Ockhamist sense but not in the Scotist sense. But why should it matter? These comments on Pasnau (2020) first set out a simple-minded explication in modern terms of some of these fourteenth-century ideas. Then I take issue with (a) Pasnau’s claim that the necessity of the past has something to do with the structure of ‘narrative history’, and (b) Duns Scotus’s claim that the contingency of the present has something to do with human freedom.

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Medieval Modal Spaces.I.—Robert Pasnau - 2020 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 94 (1):225-254.
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Arif Ahmed
Cambridge University

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References found in this work

A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1969 - Harmondsworth,: Penguin Books. Edited by Ernest Campbell Mossner.
An Essay on Free Will.Peter Van Inwagen - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40).David Hume - 1969 - Mineola, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. Edited by Ernest Campbell Mossner.
A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1958 - Philosophical Quarterly 8 (33):379-380.

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