Identity and Modality
Identity and Modality

Author: Fraser MacBride

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2006-07-20

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 019153658X

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The papers in this volume address fundamental, and interrelated, philosophical issues concerning modality and identity, issues that have not only been pivotal to the development of analytic philosophy in the twentieth century, but remain a key focus of metaphysical debate in the twenty-first. How are we to understand the concepts of necessity and possibility? Is chance a basic ingredient of reality? How are we to make sense of claims about personal identity? Do numbers require distinctive identity criteria? Does the capacity to identify an object presuppose an ability to bring it under a sortal concept? Rather than presenting a single, partisan perspective, Identity and Modality enriches our understanding of identity and modality by bringing together papers written by leading researchers working in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of mathematics. The resulting variety of perspectives correspondingly reflects both the breadth and depth of contemporary theorizing about identity and modality, each paper addressing a particular issue and advancing our knowledge of the area. This volume will provide essential reading for graduate students in the subject and professional philosophers.

Ontology, Identity, and Modality
Ontology, Identity, and Modality

Author: Peter van Inwagen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-03-22

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780521795487

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This book gathers together thirteen of Peter van Inwagen's essays on metaphysics, several of which have acquired the status of modern classics in their field. They range widely across such topics as Quine's philosophy of quantification, the ontology of fiction, the part-whole relation, the theory of 'temporal parts', and human knowledge of modal truths. In addition, van Inwagen considers the question as to whether the psychological continuity theory of personal identity is compatible with materialism, and defends the thesis that possible states of affairs are abstract objects, in opposition to David Lewis's 'extreme modal realism'. A specially-written introduction completes the collection, which will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in metaphysics.

Kripke : Names, Necessity, and Identity
Kripke : Names, Necessity, and Identity

Author: Christopher Hughes

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2004-01-15

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780191544002

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Saul Kripke, in a series of classic writings of the 1960s and 1970s, changed the face of metaphysics and philosophy of language. Christopher Hughes offers a careful exposition and critical analysis of Kripke's central ideas about names, necessity, and identity. He clears up some common misunderstandings of Kripke's views on rigid designation, causality and reference, the necessary and the contingent, the a posteriori and the a priori. Through his engagement with Kripke's ideas Hughes makes a significant contribution to ongoing debates on, inter alia, the semantics of natural kind terms, the nature of natural kinds, the essentiality of origin and constitution, the relative merits of 'identitarian' and counterpart-theoretic accounts of modality, and the identity or otherwise of mental types and tokens with physical types and tokens. No specialist knowledge in either the philosophy of language or metaphysics is presupposed; Hughes's book will be valuable for anyone working on the ideas which Kripke made famous in the philosophy world.

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality
Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality

Author: Alvin Plantinga

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-03-27

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0190282932

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Perhaps no one has done more in the last 30 years to advance thinking in the metaphysics of modality than has Alvin Plantinga. Collected here are some of his most important essays on this influential subject. Dating back from the late 1960's to the present, they chronicle the development of Plantinga's thoughts about some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics: what is the nature of abstract objects like possible worlds, properties, propositions, and such phenomena? Are there possible but non-actual objects? Can objects that do not exist exemplify properties? Plantinga gives thorough and penetrating answers to all of these questions and many others. This volume contains some of the best work in metaphysics from the past 30 years, and will remain a source of critical contention and keen interest among philosophers of metaphysics and philosophical logic for years to come.

Modalities, Identity, Belief, and Moral Dilemmas
Modalities, Identity, Belief, and Moral Dilemmas

Author: Michael Frauchiger

Publisher: ISSN

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783110438581

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This paper surveys Ruth Marcus' many contributions to modal logic and its interpretation, starting with her pioneer work on quantified modal logic and ending with the controversies concerning the origin of the idea of rigid reference and other basic ideas in the so-called “New theory of reference.” Her contributions are discussed with close attention to who gave credit to whom.

Modality, Morality and Belief
Modality, Morality and Belief

Author: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1995-01-27

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780521440820

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Modality, morality and belief are among the most controversial topics in philosophy today, and few philosophers have shaped these debates as deeply as Ruth Barcan Marcus. Inspired by her work, a distinguished group of philosophers explore these issues, refine and sharpen arguments and develop new positions on such topics as possible worlds, moral dilemmas, essentialism, and the explantion of actions by beliefs. This state of the art collection honors one of the most rigorous and iconoclastic of philosophical pioneers.