• Shawn
    13.2k
    This thread is going to sound like gibberish so bear with me here. I hope someone with knowledge about modal counterfactuals, framing conditions, and counterfactual definitiveness can chime in here.

    Let's start out with the simple proposition:

    In every possible world, a mortal will eventually succumb to death.

    Now, let's break this down a bit,

    "In every possible world" seems to be the framing condition, yet, is it not true that death instantiates the import of the framing condition in a self-referential manner to set the proposition as sensible?

    OK, now, we have "a mortal". Again, it is tautologically true that every mortal will succumb to death. Or is it? There might be a possible world where a mortal has become immortal...? Could this not be true? What becomes of counterfactual definitiveness, then? Is it governed by "mortal" or the instantiating manner of "death" being a certitude here?

    Finally, we have a sort of performative working behind the scenes in a pragmatic manner of "will eventually". I don't think much explanation is required here in terms of explaining why this IS true. And, yet death crops up here as the modal actualizer to be true.

    Does any of this make sense?

    I really don't know where this thread belongs, apart from my feeling that the lounge is the only place where it does not belong. Perhaps, phil of language, or Metaphysics and Epistemology. You decide.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    yet, is it not true that death instantiates the import of the framing condition in a self-referential manner to set the proposition as sensible?Wallows

    I don't understand that clause, starting with not being able to figure out what "instantiating the import(ance) . . . " might amount to.
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    So it is gibberish...

    Anyway, what I meant was that one can frame the condition of death either by the to be clause in the statement given or by adherence to the logic and scope of the framing condition of "in every possible world"?
  • Wayfarer
    22.5k
    Does any of this make sense?Wallows

    There's a sense in which religious philosophies have always been a quest for the eternal, the not-subject-to-death. Quite what that is, is probably impossible to state in scientific~secular terms, as it is usually clothed in allegorical, symbolic or religious language.

    There is an early book by Alan Watts, The Supreme Identity, which is about the identity of self and spirit. (I thought it an excellent book when I first read it, although I admit in the years since I've become more critical of it.) But, if you wanted to explore such ideas it is a good starting point, as it's written for a lay audience, and typically of Watts, is in the 'spiritual-but-not-dogmatically-religious' category while being quite a deep text philosophically.

    OK, now, we have "a mortal". Again, it is tautologically true that every mortal will succumb to death. Or is it?Wallows

    As the title of the book implies, there is perhaps something about us which is not simply mortal - typically conceived as soul or spirit. Of course those are ideas about which there is considerable scepticism, not to say hostility, in our secular culture, but in my view most of the discussions of what these ideas really mean are very badly informed, or not informed at all; they usually start with a caricature, and then dismiss it, to everyone's satisfaction.
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    the not-subject-to-death.Wayfarer

    And, yet "death" seems to be the (instantiating) subject here. Look, I get what you're saying; and the resulting transcendental solipsism of Wittgenstein which, I should throw in here. But, like, how?

    The statement:

    In every possible world, a moral will eventually succumb to death

    ... tries very hard to get the rubber on the asphalt; but, is hopelessly trying to appeal to logic to make sense.

    Isn't that kinda profound?
  • Wayfarer
    22.5k
    They both look extremely interesting, especially the first. I am reluctant to embark on more reading right now but they are certainly interesting titles.
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