Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Possible worlds
- 3 Possible worlds and quantifiers
- 4 Possible worlds, individuals and identity
- 5 Possibility talk
- 6 The possible worlds of knowledge
- 7 The possible worlds of belief
- 8 Time and many possible worlds
- 9 Real possibility
- 10 Impossible possible worlds
- 11 Unfinished story
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
11 - Unfinished story
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Possible worlds
- 3 Possible worlds and quantifiers
- 4 Possible worlds, individuals and identity
- 5 Possibility talk
- 6 The possible worlds of knowledge
- 7 The possible worlds of belief
- 8 Time and many possible worlds
- 9 Real possibility
- 10 Impossible possible worlds
- 11 Unfinished story
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
A budget of heresy
I have declared or argued for several quite heretical things. First, I declared in favour of the status of first-order modal logic as an artificial language. I then gave examples that show that the language of classical logic is unreliable for the evaluation of many arguments couched in ordinary language. It was urged that more attention should be paid to the logic–language relationship. Modal logic is more reliable for some argument evaluation than non-modal logic. But we saw that there is much beyond the scope of present modal logic – the present logic of boxes and diamonds.
I argued for a renewed look at the whole question of existential import for both quantifiers and names. An appeal was made to ordinary intuitions and sensible talk of the properties of nonexistent entities. McGinn effectively denies Parmenides' law as he writes:
It may now be asked how we can ascribe any properties to purely intentional objects, including the property of non-existence. Here we need to heed carefully the way we actually talk and not impose misleading models on our concepts. For we simply do ascribe properties to non-existent objects – we make remarks about them. Thus we say that Pegasus is a horse not a pig, the Zeus is the senior god, that Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant detective. These statement are all true and they contain predicative expressions; so, yes, we can predicate properties of non-existent entities.
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- Information
- Possible Worlds , pp. 191 - 194Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2003