Metaphysical conclusions as to the existence of necessary beings (if there be such) are reached by inquiry and argument, not by stipulation. — Esse Quam Videri

Far too broad. Every metaphysical inquiry stipulates a framework (language, identity conditions, modality), argues within that framework, and is answerable to coherence conditions expressible in logic.

Then why did you say the following: — Metaphysician Undercover

Because extension is about reference. The extension of "Banno" is me. And it was in response to your

Possible world semantics necessitates that the propositions, states of affairs, or whatever, reference our ideas... — Metaphysician Undercover

You really are lost.

Another way to look at it is is, "What is the definition of necessary?" Necessary implies some law that if this does not exist, then something which relies on that thing cannot exist. — Philosophim

Necessity is not causation.

I wasn't explicit enough yesterday, so I'll bold it, just to be clear.

Aristotle made the distinction. A triangle necessarily has internal angles summing to two right angles—but the triangle is not caused to have them.

The Scholastics blurred the distinction, wanting to suppose that if God wills X, then X necessarily occurs. Necessity started to look like something imposed by a prior condition.

Descartes and Spinoza made it worse, treating necessity as divine decree. Hume and Kant went along with them. The logical positivists more or less agreed, and concluded that necessity was trivial.

Kripke restored metaphysical necessity using the structure of possible worlds. Something is necessary if it occurs in every possible world, possible if it occurs in at least one world, impossible if it occurs in none, and contingent if it occurs in some but not all.

This is far and away the best account we have.

Necessity does not imply some casual law.

The only real truths are necessarily contemporaneous in the mind. — RussellA

No.

But the rest is pretty good.

Notice, correspondence is not a fundamental principle. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep. Modal logic makes use of extensionality within possible worlds, not the dubious notion of correspondence.

That makes two very uneducated people participating in this threat. — Metaphysician Undercover

Or one. We might apply Occam at this stage.

Yes, it can be.

A SOA is the way the world is. — RussellA

Better, a way the world might be.

The predicate cannot be an action, which is dynamic, such as “John is walking”. — RussellA

Yes, it can. Extensionally, "John is walking" is true IFF john is found in the extension of "...is walking"

An action changes one SOA into a different SOA, such that the action “John is walking” changes one SOA, “John is at the entrance to the park” into a different SOA “John is at the exit to the park”. — RussellA

Here is a state of affairs: John walked from the entrance to the park to the exit.

There simply is no requirement that a state of affairs must be a temporal instant. We can talk about a state of affairs at an instant or a state of affairs over time.

Meillasoux would resist framing his argument in terms of modal semantics — Esse Quam Videri

A pity, since his argument, and the the question of the OP, have model theoretical answers. We have in possible world semantics a clear and coherent grammar for modal issues. Ignoring it would be folly.

Your account seems to presume "logical necessity" concerns only entailment. Modal logic is not just concerned with mere entailment. It differentiates between and provides tools for considering nomological and metaphysical modality. There is, after all, an explicit distinction between ☐ and ⊢. And to that we can add model theory, including accessibility relations.

While we might agree that truth is not fixed by stipulation, the arguments of metaphysics should be coherent, and so constrained by a framework of logic.

Modal logic does not generate metaphysical necessity, but any claim to metaphysical necessity is accountable to modal logic.

So as I said,

Requiring an individual to exist in all worlds is a stipulated metaphysical condition, not a logical or semantic necessity. — Banno

I would have thought that the main purpose of Possible World Semantics (PWS) is to reference the world — RussellA

Yes!

Sad that this has to be said!

No, individual items, not people.

Here's my observation, the contingency of particulars in the actual world; for any individual there is a world in which it does not exist: w₀ ⊨ ∀x◊¬E(x).

But what Meillassoux wants is an application of this for every world, ☐∀x◊¬E(x).

Mine says that all individuals in the world are contingent. Meillassoux's is that all individuals in any world are contingent.

So to answer "Is there anything that exists in the actual world necessarily?" my contention will suffice; but if the question is "Is there anything that exists in any world necessarily? we'd need Meillassoux.

The conclusion is that the claim that some individual a exists necessarily, (□E(a)), is a stipulated constraint on the model, not something forced by the logic itself.

Meillassoux would rule out god as a possibility. My version just says he does not exist in the actual world... :wink:

Yep. So that's perhaps not what is being asked. The OP talks of particular things, and god, and by the last paragraph, the difference between the two.

So there are necessary truths, sentences and such. Are there necessary individuals?

I think we're talking past each other. — Esse Quam Videri

Doubtless.

“Only contingency is necessary” looks to be saying much the same as that for any individual we we might think necessary, we might posit a world in which that individual does not exist. That is, for any given individual, we might specify a world in which that individual is not in the domain.

I take the OP as asking if there are any necessary individuals - things. Not "are there necessary propositions?" or "Are there necessary truths?".

So set aside "Meillassoux's "Absolute" and look at

every existing thing... can be conceived of as not existing... without contradiction (i.e. negating a "necessary thing"). — 180 Proof

...which can be seen as an informal version of my more formal argument.

Once inconsistency is embraced at the level of first principles, rational discourse no longer functions as inquiry into reality. — Esse Quam Videri

If your account is inconsistent, you need a better account.

Do we agree on this, at least?

The job given modal logic is to provide a coherent account. If someone is happy with an incoherent account, then yes, they do not need modal logic...

And yes, introducing causality is a furphy.

There is a broader notion of necessity as what is true in all possible worlds - that two and two is four.
— Banno

(2+2)mod3=?

There are theorems in math having hypotheses that are both sufficient and necessary. — jgill

Yep. There is always all sorts of presumed background. In Peno arithmetic, if you like, 2+=2=4. So supposing that something necessarily exists would be presuming just such a situation. What we might reject is the expectation that "Is there anything that exists necessarily?" has only one answer.

So yes, that should read "There is a broader notion of necessity as what is true in all accessible possible worlds", with accessibility conditions setting out the circumstances.

I'm a bit bothered about this. Caesar was not always a General, so would ("Caesar is not a General" is true IFF Caesar is not in the extension of General) also count as timelessly true? — Ludwig V

Yep. If Caesar was a General, even if only for a short time, then it follows that Caesar was a General. Any issues here come form trying to talk about time without first developing a temporal grammar.

We can construct, after Gillian Russell, a quick temporal logic in which primitive expressions of our language are sentence letters, truth-functors, ☐ and ◇, and four unary tense logical operators: F, G, P, and H, meaning at some time in the future, at all times in the future, at some time in the past, and at all times in the future, respectively.

Models are 5-tuples, ⟨W,T,@,n,I⟩, with
1. W a non-empty set (worlds)
2. T the set of integers (times)
3. @ ∈W (the actual world)
4. n∈T (the now)
5. I assigns each sentence letter an intension: a function from T ×W into
{1,0}.

Such a structure has the capacity to set out Caesar was a General, Caesar is a General, Caesar will be a General, and so on.

Caesar is a General now → I(Caesar_is_General)(n,@) = 1
Caesar was a General at some time in the past → P(Caesar_is_General)
Caesar is not a General now → ¬I(Caesar_is_General)(n,@)

That something is necessary for the sake of other things does not automatically mean it is metaphysically necessary in the strict sense.

There's a small notion of necessity as that which must be the case in order for something else to be the case - If you would read this post, it is necessary that you read English. There is a broader notion of necessity as what is true in all possible worlds - that two and two is four. They are not the same.

The advantage of the latter is that it avoids the contentious and irrelevant notion of causation.

Something must exist necessarily — QuixoticAgnostic

Again, nuh. An empty domain is consistent with possible world semantics and with S5.

Trouble is, any individual can be made contingent by adding a world where it does not exist.

So to specify, for some individual, that there is no world in which that individual is absent, is to place a quite arbitrary restriction on the allowable domains. There is nothing in S5, modal logic, or rigid designation that forces this restriction.

Let's construct a model in which the individual a exists in every possible world:

w₁ ⊨ {a,b,c}
w₂ ⊨ {a,b}
w₃ ⊨ {a}

Here, a "exists necessarily" - occurs in every possible world.

But we can always add
w₄ ⊨ {b,c}




Requiring an individual to exist in all worlds is a stipulated metaphysical condition, not a logical or semantic necessity.

Pretty much.

...the assertion of this claim implies its own denial — Esse Quam Videri

Nuh. Sure, all you have said is that if we are to be consistent, then we need to not be inconsistent. Well, yes. If you what to be inconsistent, go ahead, but don't expect to be able to do it consistently.

Wittgenstein makes a major feature of what he calls "shadow" objects in the Blue and Brown books. — Ludwig V

Yes, from what I've understood he uses it as a stepping stone towards dropping meaning in favour of use. So if we think in terms of the meaning of a statement, we reify that meaning into a shadow of some sort; but if we think in terms of use the shadow disappears. It seems to me to be much the same point as Davidson makes,

In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false. — On the very idea of a conceptual schema

A very high percentage of the stuff you post is completely wrong, like maximally bonkers. — frank

Indeed.

Aspect two - a State of Affairs is an object’s property — RussellA

There's that slip back into object-property ontology, again. Have a go at reconsidering what you have written here using an extensional logic instead, dropping (or if you prefer, very much simplifying) the metaphysics.

“Sir James Hockenhull is a General” is true IFF Sir James Hockenhull is in the extension of "...is a General"

"Caesar is a General" is true IFF Caesar is in the extension of "...is General".

Note that time does not enter into these sentences. We could incorporate it by adding a few extra bits to the FOPL, if it were needed - but it doesn't seem to be. The substantive point is the extensionality. Temporality does not force a return to object–property talk

Same for "Unicorns were white”, which is true iff the extension of "unicorns" is included in the extension of white things.

“Sir James Hockenhull is a General”, "Caesar is a General", "Unicorns were white” are all states of affairs in that they would be true under some interpretation.

So to this:

States of Affairs exist in a mind-independent world.
The world only exists in the present.
Past events cannot exist in a world that only exists in the present
Therefore the past event (Caesar was a General) cannot exist in a world that only exists in the present.

Therefore, (Caesar was a General) cannot be a State of Affairs — RussellA

Mind-dependency is irrelevant to the truth by extensionality of the sentences being considered, as is past, present and future. All that is considered is the extension. So all the seemingly profound "Past events cannot exist in a world that only exists in the present" says is that if we only talk about the present, then we can't talk about the past. And the odd result of stipulating the restriction of putting all our sentences int he present tense is that a simple sentence such as "Caesar crossed the Rubicon" ceases to have a truth value... no small problem.

Ultimately, States of Affairs cannot be about what exists in a mind-independent world, but must be about our concepts of what exists in a mind-independent world . — RussellA

Nuh.

The grain of truth here is that sentences are produced by minds. Yet they are very much, very regularly, about what is the case in the world - about states of affairs. The truth value of "Caesar crossed the Rubicon" cannot be found without considering the difference between a state of affair in which Caesar crossed the Rubicon and one in which he didn't. Unless you would deny that such truths involve the world at all...

A State of Affairs is the relation between an object and a property, such as (snow is white).
An action is not a property. Therefore, (snow is melting) cannot be a State of Affairs.
As crossing the Rubicon is an action, (Caesar crossing the Rubicon) cannot be a State of Affairs. — RussellA

A couple of things. Actions are usually differentiated from events, such that an action requires an actor and is intended by that actor. So your turning on the light might be an action. But snow melting might be better thought of as an event. Actions are usually considered a sub-class of events.

Events can be put in subject -predicate form. So, in a rough extensional semantics along the lines of Tarski, "snow melts" would be true IFF the extension of "snow" was in the extension of "things that melt".

Further, there is more to states of affairs than objects and properties. The drop back to the intensional, Aristotelian notion of properties and objects is retrograde. Substance-property ontology is far too simplistic. Much better to continue to use extensionality.

So a state of affairs is how things are. This is something that the T-sentence captures: the sentence ont he left is true if the extensional sentence on the right is true. If snow is in the extension of things that melt, then that snow melts is a true state of affairs. If Caesar and the Rubicon are in the extension of "...crossed..." then that is a states of affairs.

I am slowly working through your posts. — RussellA

Cheers. I hope they are worth the effort.

But I cannot understand that if in a possible world there is no apple, there still is the apple’s haecceity — RussellA

Yep. There is something quite odd about such ghost-apples.

This suggests that a state of affairs is part of the actual world. — RussellA

Rather, of all the possible states of affairs, the ways things might be, only some are actual. So the picture is of the actual state of affairs being a subset of all the possible states of affairs.

But the actual world can only exist at one moment in time. — RussellA

I don't agree with that. Or rather, it's bringing in a sort of phenomenological or temporal view that only serves to restrict what is true unnecessarily. I'll go along instead with the view that things existed in the past and will continue to do so into the future, or if you prefer, with the view that there are truths about the past and the future.

And that dissolves your qualms about states of affairs being static.

Try this: that we only experience now does not change the truth value of statements about the past. That Caesar crossed the Rubicon remains true even if one insists on considering it only as a fact seen form the present. Even if the actual world only exists in the present, Caesar still crossed the Rubicon. And the situation only improves for facts that are not temporally dependent. That water is H₂O is true regardless of when it is spoken.

But I think you will resist that, and I'll leave you to it. It strikes me as an error. In the same vein, there will be apples, even if you do not "have them in your mind". There is a big difference between "The apple is on the table" and "Russell thinks there is an apple on the table". And it seems to me that in trying to make sense of both logic and mind, you mix these two.

So it does depend on the definition of "state of affairs". Aristotle's argument is indeed a good reason for changing that definition, to allow that states of affairs can comprise change. Problem solved! — Ludwig V

Yep. States of affairs include change.

Meta has a conceptual difficulty with limits and infinitesimals, and sometimes pictures states of affairs as descriptions at an instant, disallowing change within states of affairs. Sometimes, because his view changes from post to post. Or at least it appears to - there may be some obtuse way in which he can make it coherent, but so far as I can make out, it remains unexpressed.

An eloquent appraisal. Your differentiation of the three looks pretty much right to me.

I'm not keen on any of the three. I've mentioned that the use of "maximal" strikes me as problematic. The idea is introduced in the first paragraph and then more or less presumed throughout. It varies a bit, but the idea is something along the lines of a complete account of how things are. It's presumed, and perhaps erroneously, that a world is in some fashion complete.

In concrete approaches a world is defined as the maximally connected object. If we turn to abstractions, we have the world defined by every state of affairs being either included or excluded - again, a maximal (or total) account. If worlds are thought of as combinations, then possible worlds themselves are maximally consistent sets of sentences.

Each of these serves to delimit the extent of a possible world. Each excludes some possibilities and so serves to seperate one world from the others. And it is presumed that we need to do this in order to understand what a possible world is.

But I don't see why this is needed. We do not need a complete account of the world in order to consider what things would be like were Anne not at her desk. Ordinary counterfactual reasoning of this sort just is partial, local, and tolerant of indeterminacy elsewhere.

So what happens if we drop this requirement?

The function of maximalism is to differentiate absolutely between possible worlds, so if we drop maximalism we reduce that ability. We might for example have two partial descriptions of the same world, or not be able to decide if two descriptions are of one world or many.

We may have some propositions whose truth value is undecided. Part of maximalism is that every statement is either true or it is false. But "Anne is not at her desk" leaves "The neighbour is mowing his lawn" undecided.

We are departing from the complete systems like S4 and S5. rather than axioms we'd have a model-theoretical account. Necessity might be seen as true in all accessible situations rather than all accessible worlds. There would be consequences for identity.

We'd have no guarantee of global global consistency. Instead we would have consistency only for what we have access to. And what we have access to becomes somewhat arbitrary - do we consider just Anne's office, or do we consider her house? Her neighbourhood? Her town? Were do we stop?

Despite these issues i find the idea of a localised modal logic appealing.

The state of affairs is a description — Metaphysician Undercover

:grin:

The state of affairs is that the apple is on the table. It is, for the purposes of the Abstractionist, an abstract object. It is not a description.

Where's the contradiction? — Metaphysician Undercover

You can't see it. That's a problem for you. Fine.

You are neglecting the point I was making. — Metaphysician Undercover

When the point you are making changes with your every post, it's not neglect.

And when you contradict yourself in the one paragraph - as were you say first that "the observed world cannot be described by states of affairs" then that "when we reach the current limitations of our language, and there is still reality which we cannot describe, then we must devise new ways of speaking"... and thereby say what was previously unsayable, presumably.

I've always agreed that states of affairs are temporally extended. — Metaphysician Undercover

That, now, despite your previously using Zeno's argument, in which they are not temporally extended... Make up your mind.

The point is that modeling the observed empirical world as states of affairs and nothing else is an error. — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed, since the state of affairs is how things are, not a model of how things are. You even misunderstand that.

It's still incorrect, for the reasons explained. — Metaphysician Undercover

You didn't explain anything.

You made a category mistake, confusing idealised description with false description. Physics routinely abstracts stuff like constant acceleration without asserting completeness.

You tried a straw man; Physics doesn't claim that some state of affairs is maximally detailed or “accounts for all forces”.

You used a non sequitur, since from “it does not capture all dynamics” it does not follow that it is captures none.

You missed the point entirely: the example was precisely to show that a state of affairs can be temporally extended and dynamic.

In short, you mistook modelling for misdescription, and abstraction for error.

Seems to me the best way to proceed is by differentiating Combinatorialism and Abstractionism, and at the core the difference is that while Abstractionism sets up possible worlds in terms of states of affairs, Combinatorialism sets it up by combinations of individuals, relations and universals. Trouble is that Combinatorialists go on to talk about states of affairs. But if we are to make sense of the distinction those states of affairs for Combinatorialists consist in combinations of individuals and relations, but for Abstractionists they are fundamental.

If you like, we can include an error: the apple accelerates at 9.8±0.1m/s².

Your objection is vacuous.

The fact that chemical treatments are far from guaranteed to work, and work differently in different persons, indicates that objective materiality abstracted away from the interaction of the world with subjectivity is also not primary. What is primary is the indissociable interaction between the subjective and objective poles of experience, and this is the lesson phenomenology is trying to teach. — Joshs

But you've been drunk.


(Indeed, perhaps you were when you wrote that...)

, we observe the apple falling to the ground, over a period of time, and accelerating at 9.8m/s². The state of affairs is an apple falling with an acceleration of 9.8m/s².

Put simply, states of affairs can be dynamic.

They are not concatenations of instances. Hence they avoid Zeno's objections.

As a corollary, nor are they concatenations of observations at an instant.

Cool. Seems to me you were correct.

I don't understand you. The table exists, and the set exists. We are not referring to any specific apple and not asserting either that apples in general exist or that they don't. — Ludwig V

In w₃₄ the set of apples is empty. In first order logical terms, there is no extension to "...is an apple". In first-order logic predicates by themselves do not assert the existence of their extensions - that's the role of quantifiers. So an empty extension is perfectly legitimate.

To say “there is no apple on the table” is no different to saying “there is no apple in the set”.
In both cases we are referring to something that does not exist. — RussellA

Quantification is not reference. So “there is no apple on the table” is ~∃x(Ax ^ Tx). But "There is no apple in the set” is ambiguous between ~∃x(Ax ^ Tx) and ∃(x)(~A(x) ^ T(x)) This last asserts that there are no apples at all. it's as if we read "There is no apple in the set” as saying that there is a non-existent apple on the table.

A small point, but it might lead to later confusion.

, and

In possible world, say W34, there are no apples at all. Then the proposition “there is no apple on the table” is true. — RussellA

"There are no apples on the table" is the same question in any world.

Giving a set-theoretical response, if it is true in the actual world there are apples, so the set of apples is not empty, but the set of things on the table contains none of the elements of the set of apples.

In a world in which there are no apples, the set of apples is empty and so again, the set of things on the table contains no elements of the set of apple.

In FOPL, ~∃x(Ax ^ Tx) is true in both cases. In w₀ because Ux(Ax ⊃ ~Tx); in w₃₄ because Ux(~Ax)

The truth of “there is no apple on the table” never requires an apple to exist. So no particular apple is quantified over; no “merely possible apple” is required no “state of affairs” needs to obtain or fail to obtain, and existence is handled entirely by the quantifier, not by a predicate or property.

While we are here, it might be worth noticing that the boxes and diamonds haven't been needed here, because we are talking about truth inside each world, not between them. So "It is possible that there is an apple on the table" says that in at least one accessible possible world there is an apple on the table, and speaks across possible worlds.

The reason why "a state of affairs" cannot list "the positions" some object occupies over time, is because this is explicitly a compilation of a multitude of states. Therefore it is not "a state". — Metaphysician Undercover

And now

This is false, — Metaphysician Undercover

Keep dithering and vacillating and no one can touch you with anything so solid as an argument.

Sounds good. — frank

Well, the core criticism here might be much the same as Wittgenstein levelled at his own work, the Tractaus.

But better to set out what the combinators are proposing first...

You’re importing a picture that does most of the work for you, then blaming states of affairs for its consequences.

First, the idea that a ‘state’ must be unchanging is a stipulation, not a truth. A state of affairs can include change. ‘The ball rolled east at 2 m/s for five seconds’ is a perfectly ordinary state of affairs.

You keep treating a state of affairs as a snapshot, not a way things are. A way things are can be extended in time and internally structured. Saying a state of affairs can’t include change because it would no longer be that state assumes that the relevant description must be momentary or static. That assumption hasn’t been argued for. You have yet to make your case.

Second, your complaint that states of affairs don’t ‘describe the change itself’ is misleading. A description doesn’t re-enact what it describes. A trajectory doesn’t move; a sentence about change doesn’t change. That’s not a deficiency. A state of affairs specifies what’s the case, it doesn't bring it about.

Finally, the move to energy doesn’t do the work you want it to. Energy isn’t a metaphysical substitute for possibility; it’s a parameter in physical theory. Saying energy is ‘the possibility of change’ is a metaphorical gloss, not an ontological insight. Physics already quantifies change in terms of states—states with energies, including their transitions and the laws governing those transitions.

So, the problem isn’t with states of affairs, but with a picture that insists they must be instantaneous, static, and incapable of internal temporal structure. Once that picture is dropped, the alleged contradiction disappears, and the need to relocate possibility somewhere ‘between’ states goes away.

, that chat seem'd to end here:

'If the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, be removed, the whole constitution and all the relations of objects in space and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish; and as appearances, they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us.'
— Wayfarer

This... is Waif's strong doctrine. If you press it's logic, he will deny it, stepping back to some merely transcendental reality. — Banno

But no, as I said, carry on.