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Filosofický ústav Akce filosofického ústavu AV ČR Přednášky Greg Restall: Modal Logic and Contingent Existence

Greg Restall: Modal Logic and Contingent Existence

Organized by the Department of Logic

03. 04. 2025

14:00

Meeting room, Institute of Philosophy, Jilská 1, Prague

Detailed information

Detailed information

Invitation pdf

Greg Restall (University of St. Andrews):
Modal Logic and Contingent Existence

Abstract
In this talk, I will defend contingentism, the idea that some things exist contingently. It might be surprising that this needs defence, but natural reasoning principles concerning possibility and necessity on the one hand, and the existential and universal quantifiers on the other, have led some to necessitism, the view that everything that exists, exists necessarily.

Almost all recent work on modal semantics makes essential use of possible worlds models. These models have proved useful for analysing the structural properties of modal logics, but it is less clear that they fix the meaning of our modal vocabulary, given that we have no grasp of what counts as a possible world, independent of our grasp of what counts as possible. In this talk, I describe an inferentialist semantics for modal and quantificational vocabulary, not as a rival to possible worlds models, but as an explanation of how the concepts we do employ can be modelled using possible worlds. I then use this inferentialist semantics to clarify the contingentist's commitments, and offer answers to necessitist objections.

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Greg Restall: Modal Logic and Contingent Existence Organized by the Department of Logic

Detailed information

Greg Restall: Modal Logic and Contingent Existence

Organized by the Department of Logic