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Potentialism and S5

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2023

Jonas Werner
Jonas Werner*
Affiliation:
University of Bern, Institute of Philosophy, Länggassstrasse 49a, 3012 Bern – Switzerland
*
Email: jonas.werner@philo.unibe.ch
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Abstract

Modal potentialism as proposed by Barbara Vetter (2015) is the view that every possibility is grounded in something having a potentiality. Drawing from work by Jessica Leech (2017), Samuel Kimpton-Nye (2021) argues that potentialists can have an S5 modal logic. I present a novel argument to the conclusion that the most straightforward way of spelling out modal potentialism cannot validate an S5 modal logic. Then I will propose a slightly tweaked version of modal potentialism that can validate an S5 modal logic and still does justice to the core claim of potentialism.

Keywords

Potentialismmodal dispositionalismmodal logiccontingentism
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 52 , Issue 6 , August 2022 , pp. 622 - 635
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Canadian Journal of Philosophy

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