The World-Time Parallel: Tense and Modality in Logic and Metaphysics
Cambridge University Press, 1/19/2012
EAN 9781107017474, ISBN10: 1107017475
Hardcover, 278 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
Is what could have happened but never did as real as what did happen? What did happen, but isn't happening now, happened at another time. Analogously, one can say that what could have happened happens in another possible world. Whatever their views about the reality of such things as possible worlds, philosophers need to take this analogy seriously. Adriane Rini and Max Cresswell exhibit, in an easy step-by-step manner, the logical structure of temporal and modal discourse, and show that every temporal construction has an exact parallel that requires a language that can refer to worlds, and vice versa. They make precise, in a way which can be articulated and tested, the claim that the parallel is at work behind even ordinary talk about time and modality. The book gives metaphysicians a sturdy framework for the investigation of time and modality - one that does not presuppose any particular metaphysical view.
Preface
Introduction
Part I. Truth and Indexicality
1. Semantical indices
2. Philosophical entities
3. Situated truth
4. The privileged position
Part II. Predicate Logic
Tense and Modal
5. A formal language
6. The non-existent
7. Multiple indexing
8. Time and world quantifiers
Part III. Times and Worlds, or Tense and Modality?
9. Primitive modality and primitive tense
10. 'Modalism' and 'tensism'
11. The present and the actual
12. Utterances
13. Relativity
Part IV. De Rerum Natura
14. Individuals and stages
15. Predicate wormism
16. Abstract and concrete
17. Supervenience
Appendix 1. The equivalence of Lmulti, Lxtw and Li
Appendix 2. Language and metalanguage
Appendix 3. Plantinga's metaphysics
Appendix 4. Interval semantics
Appendix 5. Fatalism and the world-time parallel (with H. Kocurek)
Bibliography
Index.