The object of this paper is to examine two approaches to giving non-vacuous truth conditions for counterpossibles, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents. I first develop modifications of a Lewis-style sphere semantics with impossible worlds. I argue that this approach sanctions intuitively invalid inferences and is supported by philosophically problematic foundations. I then develop modifications of certain ceteris paribus conditional logics with impossible worlds. Tableaux are given for each of these in an appendix and soundness and completeness results are proved. While certain of the latter systems are shown to have similar problems to logics from the first approach, at least one relatively weak system appears to offer an adequate uniform semantics for counterpossibles and counterfactuals.
This commentary examines the interpretation of Parmenides developed by Rose Cherubin in her paper, “Parmenides, Liars, and Mortal Incompleteness.” First, I discuss the tensions Cherubin identifies between the definitions and presuppositions of justice, necessity, fate, and the other requisites of inquiry. Second, I critically assess Cherubin’s attribution of a sort of liar paradox to Parmenides. Finally, I argue that Cherubin’s handling of the Doxa, the section of Parmenides’ poem that deals with mortal opinion and cosmology, is unsatisfactory. I suggest that her reading may contradict the text in denying that the Doxa contains truths.
According to current interpretations of Parmenides, he either embraces a tokenmonism of things, or a type-monism of the nature of each kind of thing, or a generous monism, accepting a token-monism of things of a specific type, necessary being. These interpretations share a common flaw: they fail to secure commensurability between Parmenides' alëtheia and doxa. We effect this by arguing that Parmenides champions a metaphysically refined form of material monism, a type-monism of things; that light and night are allomorphs of what-is (to eon); and that the key features of what-is are entailed by the theory of material monism.
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