You may very well be right. The Standard Model of particle physics accounts for the 12 fermions (and the force mediating bosons) that make up the stuf...
This is close to my view also. There is no God's eye view, or view from nowhere, from which general statements of natural necessity can be disclosed a...
That doesn't make any sense. You are not using "necessary", or "possible world" in the same way any one else uses those terms. "Necessary" doesn't mea...
It's not a mistake of modal logic (or of "the standard modal approach", whatever that is) to resist the slide from actuality to necessity. Not everyth...
No, that's not what you had said. You had said that "Possibility is, by definition, not an actual state." That's a bit like saying that mammals are, b...
I am not going to understand your position any better if you are unwilling to clarify it. You've expressed your view thus: "Any statement about actual...
No, not as used by logicians and analytic philosophers. It's a basic axiom of modal logic that what is actual is, a fortiori, possible. It's not even ...
Have it your way then. "Determinism" in your sense is equivalent to necessitarianism, or to actualism in M. R. Arers's sense. It is a contentious meta...
Even if determinism is true, the state of the world at any time could still have been different if the state of the world as a whole had been differen...
That's only true if the first state of the world (if there is one) obtains not just actually but necessarily. This additional premise maybe something ...
Notice also that the same sort of mistake in modal logic can lead one fallaciously to infer the thesis of the necessity of the past from true premises...
Determinism doesn't have the implication that whatever is actual is necessary. Determinism rather is the weaker thesis that the state of the world at ...
That would make you a necessitarian rather than a determinist, although you may be a determinist as well. Necessitarianism is the view that everything...
There are two problems. First, the "actual France" and some "alternative France" (as you might contemplate it in some possible world) are not distinct...
I think the smoking gun is that Paris preexists the time when Clovis made it the capital of his Kingdom. But what has mainly been at issue in my discu...
The fiat at issue concerns the claim about France* (or whatever the speaker means to be referring to as "France") having Paris as it capital necessari...
I wouldn't want you to ask him to read the thread -- just provide the link for reference. I wouldn't want to bother any of them, myself. But sure, if ...
So, you are again pointing to a limitation agreed upon by everyone. This is the limitation to worlds in which the relevant objects (that are targets o...
Sure, if you wish. But give them a pointer to this thread so that your paraphrase of our disagreement doesn't misrepresent its nature. You still seem ...
I just did, immediately after the ":" (My bold) "... over a limited number ... as opposed to all possible worlds" would appear to contradict "...in al...
Whenever anyone speaks about France, one speaks about a country that indeed has Paris as its capital. It is generally understood that it doesn't have ...
Yes. That's what I am claiming. And that's what you seem to have been denying consistently: You appear, strangely, not to have realized that a posteri...
You thought I was advancing something crazy and I merely clarified what I meant. Now you seem to agree. But in that case, once it is established what ...
That seems rather trivial to me. If someone purports to make some statement of a posteriori necessity, then, in a first step, you may indeed have to p...
This is a puzzling remark that you would have to explain. That something is necessary rather than contingent just means that it could not have been ot...
True, but then, if the division isn't clear cut, this means that many socially instituted facts (e.g. the values of currencies relative to the gold st...
I certainly don't disagree with this either. I am questioning the inferences that you are drawing from this. It is one thing to evaluate what is said ...
I don't disagree. I quite agree. You misread me. I denied that the evaluation of this sentence at possible worlds where Samuel Clemens doesn't exist i...
Yes, of course, social-institutional facts aren't the sorts of facts that physicists and other natural scientists are interested in. Facts of the form...
Not necessarily. If you analyse all singular terms as definite descriptions (as Russell does in the case of all singular referring expression except f...
So far as I can see, that the Sun is shining at some place X at some time T is an empirical and contingent fact of geography/meteorology/astronomy, wh...
Yes indeed. The crude identity statement is quite a simplification. Hilary Putnam himself was sensitive to some of those pragmatic consideration, even...
Well, if we are evaluating the de re modal status of a true statement (i.e. inquiring about its being necessary of merely contingently true predicatio...
Possible worlds in which Mark Twain never was born aren't relevant to the evaluations of the necessity of the identity between the people that we call...
Simply put, because, firstly, although "Samuel Clemens" and "Mark Twain" have different Fregean senses, they have the same references in all possible ...
Yes, and he could also have been baptized some name other than Samuel? So what? You might just as well claim that "water is H2O" doesn't express an me...
My claim is rather more narrow than that. I am merely denying your claim that when people think of France in some counterfactual scenario, they are th...
People don't come into existence when they are named. "Mark Twain was born in 1835" is a true statement in spite of the fact that he was actually bapt...
Actually it is a necessary statement since the context is extensional and co-referential terms can be intersubstituted in it salva veritate. The sente...
You are making an invalid inference from one de re necessity statement to another unrelated de re necessity statement. Just because you are thinking a...
Of course they are identical in any world where they exist. In possible worlds where Mark Twain never was born, the issue doesn't arise. My point it t...
No it is not essential, neither is it necessary, logically or metaphysically. It just so happens that you are restricting you attention to counterfact...
Yes, for sure, you are talking about a counterfactual situation where France still has Paris as its capital. This hardly establishes that the country,...
This is an example where two different things of two different sorts (and hence that possess two distinct sets of essential properties), might both be...
Sure, and one might just as well stipulate that "France" is the name of a turnip and therefore is essentially a vegetable. So what? If you make up ess...
The reason why your name picks you up rather than your body is because it has been introduced in the language (when you were baptized, say) as the nam...
It is not a "purported alternative France" that I was talking about; it is France. France would still be France if, counterfactually, at some point in...
The "magic" involved simply is stipulation. There may seem to arise a problem if you endorse some sort of modal realism (i.e. realism about possible w...
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