Modal Platonism and the Problem of Negativity

Erkenntnis 83 (3):465-476 (2018)
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Abstract

The Platonic account of modality says, roughly, that truths about alien possibilities are grounded in uninstantiated universals. Recently, Ingram has raised a problem for this kind of view, which is that it apparently requires negative facts to play a truthmaking role. Ingram offers an alternative Platonic account which makes use of modal instantiation relations. In this paper, I highlight some of the costs of Ingram’s new account and argue that a more appealing version of Platonism—and modal theory in general—is one that is supplemented with an ontology of totality facts.

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Matthew Tugby
Durham University

Citations of this work

Something Negative about Totality Facts.Andrea Raimondi - 2023 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 19 (2):(A5)1-17.

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References found in this work

Counterfactuals.David K. Lewis - 1973 - Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Truth and truthmakers.D. M. Armstrong - 2004 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Powers: A Study in Metaphysics.George Molnar - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Stephen Mumford.
Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality.Barbara Vetter - 2015 - Oxford, England and New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.
Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 36 (3):602-605.

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