Modality and objects

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 60, Issue 238, 2010, Pages 109-125

  Sidelle, Alan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 74549179572     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: 14679213     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2008.604.x     Document Type: Review

References (19)

1. A. Sidelle, Necessity, Essence and Individuation (Cornell UP, 1989)
2. T. Sider, Four Dimensionalism: an Ontology of Persistence and Time (Oxford UP, 2001), p. 207
3. Sider, 'Bare Particulars', Philosophical Perspectives, 20 (2006), pp. 387-97, at p. 391
4. Michael Jubien, who might appear to have the sort of view which I am targeting here, does not quite fit the bill, because he thinks the objects to which the conventions are applied do have mind-independent modal properties, but that they are not the referents of the names. Indeed, the names do not have referents at all, according to him. See his Ontology, Modality and the Fallacy of Reference (Cambridge UP, 1993)
5. See the paper cited in fn. 5 for fuller explanation of how the conventionalist about modality can avoid commitment to the contingency of essences, given the contingency of conventions
6. See A. Gibbard, 'Contingent Identity', Journal of Philosophical Logic, 4 (1975), pp. 187-222
7. It is probable that the best reconstruction of the real A.J. Ayer would take him to be an anti-essentialist who rejects all de re modality. But there are places where he seems willing to make de-re-sounding claims, so long as they are understood to be analysable in terms of our conventions. See, for instance, his Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd edn (New York: Dover, 1952), pp. 147-50
8. and 'Replies', in G.F. MacDonald (ed.), Perception and Identity (Cornell UP, 179), pp. 306-14. I must confess to a greater concern for brevity and Gestalt here than historical accuracy
9. Eli Hirsch has suggested that the view is explicitly defended by Irving Copi in 'Essence and Accident', Journal of Philosophy, 51 (1954), pp. 706-19, and 'Copi' has the same number of letters as 'Ayer'; but I expect that readers would grasp the rough idea by identifying the position in the text with the name I have chosen
10. D. Wiggins, Sameness and Substance (Harvard UP, 1980)
11. and 'Ayer on Monism, Pluralism and Essence', in MacDonald (ed.), Perception and Identity, pp. 131-60
12. am also influenced in a similar vein by Eli Hirsch's The Concept of Identity (Oxford UP, 1982), esp. ch. 3
13. P. van Inwagen, Material Beings (Cornell UP, 1990)
14. Well, almost everyone. Josh Parsons seems to suggest that the true answers may just be contingent: see his 'Conceptual Conservatism and Contingent Composition', at his website, http://pukeko.otago.ac.nz
15. Though I have in fact argued that none of them is correct, in 'Is There a True Metaphysics of Material Objects?', Philosophical Issues, 12 (2002), pp. 118-45. Of course, my position does imply that none of these gives the mind-independently correct conditions - but the worry at hand is that I cannot think that any of these is correct at all
16. Or, as Karen Bennett neatly puts it, their 'sortalish' properties - but, like her, I take these all to be modally involved. See her 'SpatioTemporal Coincidence and the Grounding Problem', Philosophical Studies, 118 (2004), pp. 339-71
17. Another Wigginsian idea. See his 'On Singling out an Object Determinately', in P. Pettit and J. McDowell (eds), Subject, Thought and Context (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 169-80
18. H. Noonan, 'Indeterminate Identity, Contingent Identity and Abelardian Predicates', The Philosophical Quarterly, 41 (1991), pp. 183-93
19. D.K. Lewis, 'Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic', Journal of Philosophy, 65 (1968), pp. 113-26