Can Hardcore Actualism Validate S5?

TY - JOUR

T1 - Can Hardcore Actualism Validate S5?

AU - Kimpton-Nye, Samuel

PY - 2019/10/23

Y1 - 2019/10/23

N2 - Hardcore actualism (HA) grounds all modal truths in the concrete constituents of the actual world (see, e.g., Borghini and Williams (2008), Jacobs (2010), Vetter (2015)). I bolster HA, and elucidate the very nature of possibility (and necessity) according to HA, by considering if it can validate S5 modal logic. Interestingly, different considerations pull in different directions on this issue. To resolve the tension, we are forced to think hard about the nature of the hardcore actualist's modal reality and how radically this departs from possible worlds orthodoxy. Once we achieve this departure, the prospects of a hardcore actualist validation of S5 look considerably brighter. This paper thus strengthens hardcore actualism by arguing that it can indeed validate S5–arguably the most popular logic of metaphysical modality–and, in the process, it elucidates the very nature of modality according to this revisionary, but very attractive, modal metaphysics.

AB - Hardcore actualism (HA) grounds all modal truths in the concrete constituents of the actual world (see, e.g., Borghini and Williams (2008), Jacobs (2010), Vetter (2015)). I bolster HA, and elucidate the very nature of possibility (and necessity) according to HA, by considering if it can validate S5 modal logic. Interestingly, different considerations pull in different directions on this issue. To resolve the tension, we are forced to think hard about the nature of the hardcore actualist's modal reality and how radically this departs from possible worlds orthodoxy. Once we achieve this departure, the prospects of a hardcore actualist validation of S5 look considerably brighter. This paper thus strengthens hardcore actualism by arguing that it can indeed validate S5–arguably the most popular logic of metaphysical modality–and, in the process, it elucidates the very nature of modality according to this revisionary, but very attractive, modal metaphysics.

KW - S5

KW - actualism

KW - hardcore actualism

KW - logic

KW - modality

KW - possible worlds

KW - potentiality

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074563467&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/phpr.12656

DO - 10.1111/phpr.12656

M3 - Article

SN - 0031-8205

JO - PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

JF - PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

ER -