On a Supposed Puzzle Concerning Modality and Existence



Atkinson, T ORCID: 0000-0002-9800-6173, Hill, DJ ORCID: 0000-0003-4546-8662 and McLeod, SK ORCID: 0000-0003-1457-2942
(2019) On a Supposed Puzzle Concerning Modality and Existence. Organon F, 26 (3). pp. 446-473.

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Abstract

Kit Fine has proposed a new solution to what he calls ‘a familiar puzzle’ concerning modality and existence. The puzzle concerns the argument from the alleged truths ‘It is necessary that Socrates is a man’ and ‘It is possible that Socrates does not exist’ to the apparent falsehood ‘It is possible that Socrates is a man and does not exist’. We discuss in detail Fine’s setting up of the ‘puzzle’ and his rejection, with which we concur, of two mooted solutions to it. (One of these uses standard, Kripkean, notions, and the other rests on work done by Arthur Prior.) We set out, and reject, the philosophy of modality underlying Fine’s new solution, and we defend an alternative response to the alleged puzzle. Our solution follows the work of David Wiggins in distinguishing between the sentential operator ‘It is necessary that’ and the predicate modifier ‘necessarily’. We briefly provide this distinction with a possible- world semantics on which it is neither a necessary truth, in some sense, that Socrates exists nor true, in some sense, that Socrates necessarily exists.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: ## TULIP Type: Articles/Papers (Journal) ##
Uncontrolled Keywords: contingent existents, de re/de dicto distinction, de re modality, existence, Kit Fine, necessity
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 28 Aug 2019 13:14
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 00:28
DOI: 10.31577/orgf.2019.26306
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3052711

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