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In 'Actualism or Possibilism?', James Tomberlin develops two challenges for actualism. The challenges are to account for the truth of certain sentences without appealing to merely possible objects. After canvassing the main actualist attempts to account for these phenomena, he then critically evaluates the new conception of actualism that we described in Linsky and Zalta [1994]. He suggests that while our conception of actualism meets the challenges he has set, it nevertheless has consequences he cannot accept. In particular, Tomberlin objects to the way in which it alters ordinary notions of existence, concreteness, and essential and contingent properties.In this paper, we shall respond to Tomberlin's objections. However, we must first take the time to correct his account of the way in which we would meet one of his challenges for actualism. Tomberlin's second challenge for actualism is this: offer a credible treatment (i.e., an analysis that preserves truth and entailments) of the sentence 'Ponce de Leon searched for the fountain of youth' which does not require Ponce de Leon to stand in a de re relation to some non-actual individual.1 Tomberlin asserts that we would analyze this claim as a relation between Ponce de Leon and a contingently nonconcrete individual. Since our view is that contingently nonconcrete individuals are actual, it would appear that we * Published in Philosophical Studies (Special Issue: Possibilism and Actualism), 84/2-3 (1996): 283-294.1 In the manuscript version of Tomberlin's paper, this challenge appears on p. 12.Bernard Linsky and Edward N. Zalta 2 have met his challenge. However, we would not analyze the claim in question the way Tomberlin suggests. We sharply distinguish between contingently nonconcrete objects, which we proposed for the analysis of modality, and genuine abstract objects, which we think are needed for the analysis of intentional relations. On our view, the objects needed for the analysis of modality are just the wrong kind of thing for the analysis of intentionality. In what follows, therefore, we first explain why we deny the not uncommon view that 'possibilia' (or actualist reconstructions thereof) are suitable as intentional objects and afterwards respond to the specific objections that Tomberlin raises against our view. In our [1994], we proposed an intepretation of the simplest quantified modal logic that is consistent with actualism. The simplest quantified modal logic combines classical quantification theory, the propositional modal logic K (or, for philosophical applications, S5), and the Barcan formula (3∃xφ → ∃x3φ). Unlike Kripke semantics, 2 in which each world may have a different domain, our interpretation employs models with a single domain of quantification, the objects of which have different properties at different worlds.3 Using a primitive notion of concreteness (which can be given the gloss 'spatiotemporal'), we began by classifying the objects in that single domain as either those which are concrete at the actual world or those which are not c...

Over the years a number of arguments have been formulated in elementary modal logic purporting to show that there are limits to what can be known or believed. These include the ‘Fitch’ style arguments that will be the main interest of this chapter, versions of the paradoxes of the ‘Surprise examination’ and the ‘Preface’, and several arguments against analyses of truth in terms of verifiability under ideal conditions. A use of iteration of operators and even apparent self-reference seems to reappear in various of these arguments and so one might wonder what exactly is common to these arguments and if that common element reveals something about their validity. In recent years, it has also been claimed that verificationism is subject to logical difficulties revealed by these arguments. It would be a challenge to verificationism to have a proof that some true sentences simply cannot be known, or believed, even by an idealized agent. The understanding of these arguments is thus a pressing issue for the verificationist program. Proposals for analyses of truth in terms of verification in ideal conditions also confront difficulties when one worries about the truth conditions for statements asserting that such ideal conditions do or do not obtain. There appears to be at least self-application of the theory of truth to its own preconditions. This chapter identifies the elements of ‘self-reference’ in these various arguments, distinguish self-reference proper from the use of iteration of operators expressing epistemic conditions, and then provide a uniform account of them making use of the idea of logical types of propositions.

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