Indexed Actuality

Stephanou, Yannis

doi:10.1023/a:1017915417449

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…This ambiguity arises even when we stipulate that 'actually' is to have the meaning it has in the most natural reading of (1), for on Stephanou's view the ambiguity arises from the complex way in which 'actually' interacts with other modal terms. (In the logic of Stephanou (2001), this interaction is modeled by means of infinitely many indexed operators.) The same ambiguity afflicts modal comparisons like (1).…”

Section: Necessitism For All P If Actually P Then Necessarily Actually Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Logic of Contingent Actuality

Glazier,

Krämer

2024

Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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Current orthodoxy in modal logic and metaphysics has it that actuality is non-contingent in the following sense: for all p, if actually, p, then necessarily, actually, p. Call this thesis (Actuality) Necessitism and its negation (Actuality) Contingentism. Thus, according to Contingentism, there is at least one proposition p which is actually true but which could have been actually false. In another paper, one of us (Glazier 2023) has recently defended Contingentism. The present paper explores the logic of actuality under Contingentism. After informally introducing Contingentism and outlining what we take to be the main motivations for accepting it, we consider how contingent actuality should be taken to be. We argue that the nature, or essence, of actuality imposes certain limits on the extent to which actuality could have been different, and these then inform our view of the logic of actuality. Turning to the formal study of the logic of contingent actuality, we specify a formal language and a possible world semantics for that language and distinguish a number of natural notions of validity and consequence to which it gives rise. We present axiomatizations of the different resulting logics and examine the variety of iterated modalities in our systems. We establish soundness and completeness results.

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Section: Necessitism For All P If Actually P Then Necessarily Actually Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Logic of Contingent Actuality

Glazier,

Krämer

2024

Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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“…Similarly, «you» will be the combination of the string 'you' and its meaning, one or more rules that govern its use. It is possible that 'river' should have another meaning, but it is impossible that 5 Stephanou (2001) discusses the logic of 'actually' covering both bound and unbound occurrences of the word.…”

Section: Indexicality and Necessary Truths 21 Expressions And Theirmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I am grateful for the time and effort spent on refereeing. Stephanou (2001), which discusses the concept of actuality using formal methods, and the present paper are complementary, but neither presupposes the other. (On p. 364 of Stephanou (2001), at the end of the third line from the bottom, one should add the sentence “But in the event that m ′ = 0, then from conj( A ) we shall get conj′(□ i A ) if we replace each conjunct C j of the former with □ i ¬[ p 1 → p 1 ]∨ C j ”.…”

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confidence: 91%

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The Meaning of ‘Actually’

Stephanou¹

2010

Dialectica

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The paper is an investigation into the concept of actuality from the standpoint of the philosophy of language. It is argued that expressions such as ‘actually’ and ‘in fact’ are not indexicals like ‘here’ and ‘now’; when e.g. ‘Snow is actually white’ is uttered in a world, what proposition is conveyed does not depend on the world. Nor are such expressions ambiguous. The paper makes a suggestion about the role that ‘actually’ and its cognates do play. It is also argued that the sentence ⌜Actually S⌝ expresses a necessary truth only if S itself expresses one. In order to capture the necessitation of the proposition expressed in ⌜Actually S⌝, it is not sufficient to prefix the word ‘necessarily’.

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“…Contrast Lewis : 98–9. Peacocke (: 485–6), Hazen (: 506), Forbes (: 59–60), and Stephanou () achieve the same end by introducing indexed modal operators.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Semantics of Actuality Terms: Indexical vs. Descriptive Theories

Davis

2013

Nous

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Indexed Actuality

Cited by 9 publications

References 4 publications

The Logic of Contingent Actuality

The Logic of Contingent Actuality

The Meaning of ‘Actually’

The Semantics of Actuality Terms: Indexical vs. Descriptive Theories

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