The Bounds of Possibility

Author:

Dorr Cian,Hawthorne John,Yli-Vakkuri Juhani

Abstract

This book didn’t have to consist of exactly the sentences that it in fact contains: any one of its sentences could have been very different. But it could not have consisted of an entirely different collection of sentences, such as to make it a gothic novel or a treatise on wine-tasting. Other familiar objects are similarly capable of being moderately different, but not radically different, in various respects. But there are puzzling arguments which threaten these apparently obvious judgments, exploiting the fact that an appropriate sequence of small differences can add up to a radical difference. This book presents the first full-length treatment of these puzzles, using them as an entry point to a broad range of metaphysical questions about possibility, necessity, and identity. It introduces tools of higher-order modal logic which enable a rigorous treatment of the puzzles, and develops a strategy for resolving them based on a plenitudinous ontology of material objects, which induces fine-grained variability in the reference of words like ‘book’.

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Cited by 13 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. Contingentism and fragile worlds;Inquiry;2024-08-07

2. Heuristics in philosophy;Asian Journal of Philosophy;2024-06-15

3. Arithmetic is Necessary;Journal of Philosophical Logic;2024-06-05

4. Some Ways the Ways the World Could Have Been Can’t Be;Journal of Philosophical Logic;2024-04-25

5. Propositional Quantifiers;2024-04-23

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3