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Higher-Order contingentism, Part 1: Closure and generation
Fritz, Peter Goodman, Jeremy
Fritz, Peter
Goodman, Jeremy
Author
Abstract
This paper is a study of higher-order contingentism – the view, roughly, that it is contingent what properties and propositions there are. We explore the motivations for this view and various ways in which it might be developed, synthesizing and expanding on work by Kit Fine, Robert Stalnaker, and Timothy Williamson. Special attention is paid to the question of whether the view makes sense by its own lights, or whether articulating the view requires drawing distinctions among possibilities that, according to the view itself, do not exist to be drawn. The paper begins with a non-technical exposition of the main ideas and technical results, which can be read on its own. This exposition is followed by a formal investigation of higher-order contingentism, in which the tools of variable-domain intensional model theory are used to articulate various versions of the view, understood as theories formulated in a higher-order modal language. Our overall assessment is mixed: higher-order contingentism can be fleshed out into an elegant systematic theory, but perhaps only at the cost of abandoning some of its original motivations.
Keywords
contingentism, higher-order modal logic, modal metaphysics, Kit Fine, Robert Stalnaker, Timothy Williamson
Date
2016
Type
Journal article
Journal
Journal of Philosophical Logic
Book
Volume
45
Issue
6
Page Range
645-695
Article Number
ACU Department
Dianoia Institute of Philosophy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
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