yes, I agree. Quine dropped modality too quickly. So the issue here is why did he think it necessary to drop modality and have his concerns being answered?

Let's have a quick look at the sort of reasons we have for not treating existence as a predicate. One example:

From

Circular Quay is in Sydney

we infer

Something is in Sydney

And write
( ∃x) (x is in Sydney)

yet from

There is no such thing as Pegasus

we do not infer:
( ∃x) (there is no such thing as x)

"Circular Quay is in Sydney" treats being in Sydney as a predicate. If we were to treat existence as a predicate, the second inference would be valid.

So instead of parsing "There is no such thing as Pegasus" as Pegasus not having the property of existence, ~∃!(Pegasus), we pars it as there not being any thing that is Pegasus: ~∃(x)(x is pegasus).

This is the approach of Frege and Russell, and others, mentioned in the SEP article.

Time doesn't exist. — Corvus

Yet

I never claimed time doesn't exist. — Corvus

And since (p&~p)⊃q

The point here is that, the OP created on the first day doesn't exist. It exists as OP with different properties — Corvus

...the OP both exists and yet does not exist.

:confused:

Basically I'm saying Quine used math to inform on linguistics. — DifferentiatingEgg

Oh, very much so. His academic reputation began with his New Foundations, an alternative axiomatisation of set theory. Unlike ZF, NF apparently allows a universal set without paradox, which fits nicely with Quine's holism. It makes use of stratification, which like the system you describe, creates a hierarchy. It has some interesting implications in regard to paradoxes.

Thanks for the diagram. While it's an inserting observation I'm not able to see where it might go in elation to the OP.

Yep.

...necessity as opposed to tautology — J

Yeah, it's a good point. I'm not sure where to go with that, so will give it some more thought.

I've been listening to Quine's Pursuit of Truth — DifferentiatingEgg

Have you a link?

The powerset of words is greater than the set of words because there are more sets of words — DifferentiatingEgg

There are arguments that the number of sentences in a natural language can be indenumerable. There was a thread on that a few years back. I'll see if I can locate it. It might be of interest to your course.

Yes, how tautology fits is part of the subtext.

I really don't see why you need to make this yet another thread about me.

Can we please have mod attention to this persistent failure on Leon's part to address the topic at hand, and to indulge in personal insults directed at me?

Meh. I'll take this to PM in an attempt to keep the thread on topic.

Would it be Wittgensteinian or Quinean? — Corvus

Logic.

The point here is that, the OP created on the first day doesn't exist. It exists as OP with different properties — Corvus

Very clearly, in the first sentence you say that the OP does not exist. In the second you say that the OP exists.

If you cannot see this to be a problem, then there is no point in continuing.

Now I see why fdrake retired as moderator. — jgill

:up:

So you will not be putting up your hand? Me neither.

The point here is that, the OP created on the first day doesn't exist. It exists as OP with different properties — Corvus

Hmm. If you cannot see the contradiction in those two sentences, then there is not much that can be done to explain it further.

Cheers.

It is perhaps becoming clear how two somewhat different uses of "necessity" are at work here. One has necessity as opposed to analyticity, the other has necessity as opposed to possibility. Early philosophy did not make this distinction, leading to difficulty. Aristotelian essentialism apparently does not differentiate analyticity from possibility.

'If Socrates is sitting, "Socrates is currently sitting" is true by necessity' would now be understood in terms of accessibility. There are possible worlds in which Socrates is not sitting. And in every possible world in which Socrates is sitting, Socrates is sitting. Putting this another way, if we consider only those possible worlds in which Socrates is sitting, then in every one of those worlds, Socrates is indeed sitting. So in a way of speaking, in those words in which Socrates is sitting, "necessarily" Socrates is sitting.

This would not be valid in S5, since every world is accessible. Indeed, "Socrates is sitting, therefore necessarily socrates is sitting" is invalid in K and S4.

When you say X is identical to Y, it is because X and Y have exactly same properties in every aspects. — Corvus

You can do that. But what is being asked here is not if the OP is identical, but if it is the same OP. The OP has changed - what has changed? the Op has changed. It is the same OP but now it has different properties. The OP on my screen may not have the very same properties as the same as the OP on your screen, yet we talk about their being the same OP.

Existence stopped becoming existence. Time stopped the moment it ceased to be existence. Nonexistence is in the mind of the living as a concept, not in the existence which ceased to be existence. — Corvus

I've no idea wha that might mean.

Banno with the properties (weight, height, looks, knowledge, wisdom) 50+ years ago is not the same Banno with the properties (weight, height, looks, knowledge, wisdom) in 2025. — Corvus

That's right. Banno has changed. Who changed? Banno changed. Look at that question with great care. The young man and the codger are the same person - your very utterance assumes that, by referring to the young man and then to the codger with the very same term.

You've thrown an odd notion of identity into the mix.

The Banno of fifty years ago is the same Banno as the one writing this post. That Banno has aged, but it's not a different Banno. Ask yourself; Who aged? Why, Banno aged. See how identity persists?

The OP is the same OP you wrote, perhaps edited and perhaps with a different time stamp. Which Post has a different time stamp? Which post my have been edited? Why, the OP, of course. Identity persists despite change.

You have been saying that the OP when it was created exists now. — Corvus

No I haven't. I have been saying that the OP you wrote still exists. You can show this by following the links.

Existence has ambiguity in its meaning. — Corvus

So existence becomes nonexistence and yet that there is no time.

It occured to me after I wrote this, that a bit of Rödl might have seeped in. — Wayfarer

A bit of Selley's sealant will fix that.

Lots of Kantians out there think along similar lines.

Not offered as anything authoritative - I think they are both wrong. But they are not the same.

Indeed.

Events or objects in the past exist in different state and properties to the ones at present. — Corvus

We can join bits of language together in ways that are somewhat deceptive. Think about the poem about the little man who wasn't there. It has a metaphysical ring to it, from the conflict between seeing f a little man, despite his not being there. Now I don't think there is any profound metaphysics in Antigonish, just the concatenation of a few words that behave in a way not dissimilar to an illusion.

I think something not too different is happening when one says something like "Time does not exits". I don't see how we can sensibly dispense with the notion of time, without leaving ourselves open to the sorts of discontinuities discussed above, where one talks about the past, and about past events, or the future and possible future happenings, or differentiates these from the present, while at the same time insisting that there is no time.

I surmise that there is a point you are trying to make, something to do with things in the past not being the subject of direct perception in the way things before you right now are, or some mistaken idea that only what is proven or believed or present to you now is what exists. I don't think you captured that sentiment with "time does not exist".

There is also something more than a little bit problematic in supposing that there are different types of existence, such that things in the past existed in a different way ("state") to how they exist now. perhaps this coms down to treating existence as a (first order) property, such that things that are before us now supposedly have a different sort of first-order existence to things in the past. I don't think there is a property of my footstool that changes between when I put my foot on it a few seconds ago and now, that somehow means it is now in a "different state" to how it is now.

When you keep insisting about the OP when it was created still exists, you were talking about identity of the OP, were you not? I was just trying to let you know that the OP exists now with different properties. The OP when created had time stamp of "1 minute ago". It had no replies.
Now the OP has time stamp "11 days ago", and has 523 replies. They are not the same OP. — Corvus

There is a very strong sense in which it is the very same OP, and that OP still exists, still can be linked to, is the very same OP mentioned in previous posts, had the time stamp "1 minute ago" but now has the time stamp "12 days ago". This is the common sense use, where when we ask "what is the OP of this thread?" we get the same answer now as we did then. If I ask you what the OP of this thread is, you will point to this.

It is not an issue of "not exist". It is an issue of "different state of existence". Error is your not being able to tell the difference on nature of the existence. — Corvus

This is different to your original thesis, that time does not exist, so Kudos for adjusting your position. But as discussed above, it is not clear what "different states of existence" might be.

Being perceived is not what it is for something to exist.
— Banno

Why not? What is it that qualifies and proves for something to exist? — Corvus

becasue we can misremember - the idea that what we believe happened and what actually happened are different makes perfect sense. We might be wrong. This is what permits us to adjust our thinking to match what is the case. If what is true were nothing more than what we perceive, we could never misperceive. We could never learn.

Somethings being proven to be the case is very different to something just being the case. One is about how we think things are, the other about how they are. This is a very fundamental difference that seems obscured in the thinking of many folk.

Isn't that what Quine doubts? — bongo fury

Yep. He was pushing back against formal modal logic.

I'm not sure of the time line here. According to the forward, there were substantial revisions to the present article in around 1960-61. Kripke's A Completeness Theorem for Modal Logic was published in 1959. The Princeton Lectures, which became Naming and Necessity, were in 1970, well after Quine's paper.

It appears that the modal logic that Quine was addressing was mostly that prior to what we might be using now. And much, much clearer than Medieval modal logic.

So a new issue is how earlier problems might be parsed in formal modal terms, what those problems then look like and if there are ensuing issues.

I'm not too up on the de dicto/de re distinction, but it should be one of those that is amenable to formal description. Maybe @Count Timothy von Icarus will weigh in. For my part I understand that de dicto modalities have the whole proposition within the scope of the modal operator, as in K, applying across all possible worlds, while de re modalities apply to the properties of some individual - and here the terminology becomes ambiguous - and not always in every possible world. So in terms of syntax, de dicto is most similar to ☐∃(x)f(x) and de re, to ∃(x)☐(fx), while in terms of semantics de dicto understands necessity as "true in every possible world" while de re might understand necessity as "true in this (or some) world", a cumbersome notion incompatible with S5.

Others understand this stuff in more detail than I.

Part one of the article is a study of some now fairly typical examples of opaque contexts. That is, contexts in which one cannot swap names around without losing the truth of what one is saying.

The examples include quotation, what we might now call propositional attitude, and modality. It's worth noting that these are three distinct issues, and they might (do....) need to be addressed in different ways.

The thesis is summed up in the last sentence:

What is important is to appreciate that the contexts ‘Necessarily . . .’ and ‘Possibly . . .’ are, like quotation and ‘is unaware that . . .’ and ‘believes that . . . referentially opaque.

A breathe of fresh air. A history over time exists whether it is recorded through human perception or not. Paleontologists discover this truth frequently. — jgill

Cheers. Comes back to the confusion between what is believed to be the case and what is the case. Sometimes our beliefs are different from what is true. Sometimes we are mistaken. Even Palaeontologists.

This is a complex issue. I'm still working through it. First some comments on syntax, then on semantics.

Necessity and possibility quantify over complete propositions. Folk will be familiar with propositional logic, the p's and q's of p⊃q and so on. "Normal" modal logic (the system K) allows us to write ☐p and ◇p, so that the whole of the proposition is inside the scope of the modal operator.

(2) Necessarily (∃x)(x is greater than 7) — J

This can be parsed as ☐∃(x)(fx) were "f" is "greater than seven". This is well-formed, since ∃(x)(fx) is complete.

(1) (∃x)(x is necessarily greater than 7) — J

The apparent parsing here is ∃(x)☐(fx). But "fx" is incomplete. The "x" is a variable, not an individaul constant. It's not that "x" could stand for anything - that'd be U(x)(fx). It's that we just do not know what x might be. It does not say that something is f, nor that nothing is f. That is, it is not a whole proposition. Hence it cannot be replaced by the p's and q's of propositional calculus, and cannot take a modal operator in normal modal logic. But the situation is more complex than that.

To a large extent this is a modern version of the de re/de dicto distinction. but we can be much clearer here using modal first order language than was possible in medieval times.

Despite these syntactic misgivings there may well be interpretations in possible world semantics in which ∃(x)☐(fx) can be understood. "There is something that in every possible world is f". The question then becomes how this is to be understood, and if it can be made consistent. From what I have been able to glean, if we step from K to S5 and permit ∃(x)☐(fx), then modal collapse follows.

For example, if I am packaging my visit to Japan 10 year ago into experience, then the arrival of Narita Airport via JAL flight would be the beginning of the experience, and then my stay in central Tokyo, visiting Nagoya and Osaka area for meeting with my friends in the cities, and then the moment of boarding my return flight would be the end of the experience. — Corvus

So... that's an ordering in terms of time, which you say doesn't exist...

Banno as a newborn 50+ year ago = Banno as a man after 50+ years from his birth ?
They don't look the same Banno to me. — Corvus

Now you have moved on to identity. I grew up, over time.

Your thesis is that what is not part of your immediate perception does not exist. This is in error.

Being perceived is not what it is for something to exist.

It was a YouGov poll, not ABC.

https://au.yougov.com/elections/au/2025

MRP Methodology

New polling

The model estimates there is a 78 per cent chance of a hung parliament, and a 19 per cent chance of the Coalition winning a majority. — ABC News

I'm surprised it's that close.

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/about/funding-support

Then start a thread about Bung and Kripke rather than drop it in the middle of another thread. :grimace:

First, Physics uses modal operations throughout.

Second, how is this germane?

Third, no one here owes anyone else a response.

Fourth, I'm not avoiding your posts, just not bothering with those that appear trivial or irrelevant.

Alternat link: Internet Archive.

This is the whole text of the book, 10.3MB

The Marcus Family site. It's been useful for years, I'm not too concerned, but do as you see fit.

Then why bother raising the topic.

Sure. How would you set these out in first order logic?

"is" in English has three interpretations in first order logic: Quantification, equivalence and predication.

That's one of the problems here - it is very unclear how one is to make sense of @Corvus's "time does not exist".

The birth of Banno was an event in the past which doesn't exist now. — Corvus

It's far from clear how to make sense of this. It is true that I was born in the past. If banno's birth is an event in the past then there are events in the past and hence there is a past.

Nor is it clear how my existing now is different to the way in which I existed fifty years ago. I grew forma. young man into an older, wiser one, perhaps, but how is that a change in my "mode of being", or whatever obtuse term one might choose.

The Banno just born 50 year ago doesn't exist now. — Corvus

Well, it was more than fifty years, but I am still here.

Seems to me that the more you say, the more confused your position becomes.

It existed in the past. — Corvus

Well, no. The OP was written in the past. It still exists.

Perhaps you might try setting out what you means by "exists".

Your error is to equate experience (perception?) with existence, or something along those lines.

The Op was written in the past. Therefore there is a past for it to be written in.

It is the archive of the OP. — Corvus

Well, no. It's the OP. It was written in the past. There is a past in which it was written. There is perhaps a future in which you read this post. End of story, really.

And you find it necessary to use scare quotes for that? — Arcane Sandwich

Yep. Your lizardfish are a different, and less tasty, species to our flathead.

You know what we import from Australia? — Arcane Sandwich

Coal.

Time exists, but in a conceptual form. The OP's statement time doesn't exist have different implications. The OP was in the past, and it doesn't exist now, as it was when it first created. — Corvus

"...it doesn't exist now"? Your OP exists. Here is a link to it:

"...as it was when it first created"? Do you mean that you edited it?

Time is much more than a concept. It's happened between your last post and your next. It happened between your reading the beginning and the end of this sentence. And your reply to this post is in the future. Unless you are reading this even further not the future, or you give up and do not reply.

You have been talking about the OP in the past, but not time. What existed in the past doesn't exist as in the same state when time passed. — Corvus

I am definitely talking about time; I mentioned your OP, but now I am talking about your last post. What they both have in common is being in the past, which is an aspect of time.