Description
Book SynopsisAre there such things as merely possible people, who would have lived if our ancestors had acted differently? Are there future people, who have not yet been conceived? Questions like those raise deep issues about both the nature of being and its logical relations with contingency and change. In Modal Logic as Metaphysics, Timothy Williamson argues for positive answers to those questions on the basis of an integrated approach to the issues, applying the technical resources of modal logic to provide structural cores for metaphysical theories. He rejects the search for a metaphysically neutral logic as futile. The book contains detailed historical discussion of how the metaphysical issues emerged in the twentieth century development of quantified modal logic, through the work of such figures as Rudolf Carnap, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Arthur Prior, and Saul Kripke. It proposes higher-order modal logic as a new setting in which to resolve such metaphysical questions scientifically, by the constr
Trade ReviewI am inclined to say that Modal Logic as Metaphysics is the greatest ever integrated study of the logic and the metaphysics of modality: it is almost certainly the most comprehensive. [It] is also, in my judgment, the most important book on the metaphysics of modality since On The Plurality of Worlds. * John Divers, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research *
a very important addition to the literature... clear, meticulous, and ingenious... This tightly argued book contains a large number of interesting arguments, claims, observations, and comments on a wide variety of topics in modal logic and metaphysics. It reminds us that there is much useful philosophizing to be done beyond an incredulous stare. * Takashi Yagisawa, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
the issues raised by the book are among the most important in current work on modal metaphysics, and I very much hope that all metaphysicians of modality make the effort required to come to terms with its many ideas and arguments. * M. L. Cresswell, The Philosophical Quarterly *
Table of ContentsPreface ; 1. Contingentism and Necessitism ; 2. The Barcan Formula and its Converse: Early Developments ; 3. Possible Worlds Model Theory ; 4. Predication and Modality ; 5. From First-Order to Higher-Order Modal Logic ; 6. Intensional Comprehension Principles and Metaphysics ; 7. Mappings between Contingentist and Necessitist Discourse ; 8. Consequences of necessitism ; Methodological Afterword ; Bibliography ; Index
