Organon F
Volume 26, August 2019, Issue 3, Pages 446–473
ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)
Research Article | Special issue on Reflecting on the Legacy of C.I. Lewis: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Modal Logic
On a Supposed Puzzle Concerning Modality and Existence
Thomas Atkinson – Daniel J. Hill – Stephen K. McLeod
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.
Contingent existents, de re/de dicto distinction, de re modality, existence, Kit Fine, necessity.
Author
Thomas Atkinson
Affiliation
University of Liverpool
Address
Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool, Mulberry Court, Mulberry Street, Liverpool, L69 7ZY, United Kingdom
Author
Daniel J. Hill (Corresponding author)
Affiliation
University of Liverpool
Address
Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool, Mulberry Court, Mulberry Street, Liverpool, L69 7ZY, United Kingdom
Author
Stephen K. McLeod
Affiliation
University of Liverpool
Address
Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool, Mulberry Court, Mulberry Street, Liverpool, L69 7ZY, United Kingdom
Received
4 October 2018
Accepted
9 February 2019
Published online
24 August 2019
Publishers
Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
APA
Atkinson, T., Hill, D.J., and McLeod, S.K. (2019). On a Supposed Puzzle Concerning Modality and Existence. Organon F, 26(3), 446–473. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2019.26306
Chicago
Atkinson, Thomas, Hill, Daniel J., and McLeod, Stephen K. 2019. "On a Supposed Puzzle Concerning Modality and Existence." Organon F 26 (3): 446–473. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2019.26306
Harvard
Atkinson, T., Hill, D.J., and McLeod, S.K. (2019). On a Supposed Puzzle Concerning Modality and Existence. Organon F, 26(3), pp. 446–473. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2019.26306
© Thomas Atkinson, Daniel J. Hill, Stephen K. McLeod
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