Possible worlds play a ubiquitous role in technical and philosophical discussions of the metaphysics and logic of modality. A central concern of philosophers over the past 50 years has been to understand the extent to which possible worlds and their applications interact with two competing metaphysical views, actualism and possibilism.
The last decade, however, has seen a significant shift in modal metaphysics away from the debate between actualism and possibilism and towards the debate between contingentism and necessitism, in large part due to the influence of Timothy Williamson’s work on these topics. This shift promised to make many debates in modal metaphysics more tractable—contingentism and necessitism are precisely defined theses and we can more rigorously assess the consequences of these views, comparing the theoretical virtues of necessitist and contingentist approaches to various issues in modal metaphysics.
For the most part, this promise has arguably been delivered. However, comparatively little work has been done on how the shift to contingentism vs. necessitism could reshape key debates in the philosophy of possible worlds. This workshop aims to bring together those working on contingentism, necessitism, higher-order metaphysics, and modal metaphysics in general to explore how the theses of contingentism and necessitism interact with, and reshape our understanding of, the project of understanding modality with worlds.
Abstracts can be dowloaded here.
Speakers
- Kit Fine (NYU)
- Jeremy Goodman (USC)
- Bruno Jacinto (CFCUL)
- Christopher Menzel (Texas A&M)
- Cansu Yuksel (KCL)