UNIVERSITATEA DIN BUCUREȘTI

FACULTATEA DE FILOSOFIE
FILOSOFIE TEORETICĂ

LUCRARE DE LICENȚĂ

Metaphysical views
about modality and their
ontological commitment

Coordonator: Prof. Univ. Dr.

Autor: Paul Sergiu Popescu
Mircea Dumitru

București, Septembrie
2021
Contents

Chapter 1 - The Basic Notion of Modality 2

Chapter 2 - Modalism 5

Chapter 3- Modal Realism and Ersatzism 16

Chaper 4 - Modal Skepticism and Conclusions 23

Bibliography 26

2
 Chapter 1
The Basic Notion of Modality

An expression that characterizes the mode of existence of certain entities is called

modal expression. Thus, the notion of modality is used to describe the mode of existence of
the entities involved in the modal expression.

Let’s take an arbitrary proposition P= It is sunny. We can have different variants

about the way in which we say that P. For example, we can say that Today is sunny, that it is
possible, that is necessary that today is sunny, etc. Today, possible and necessary express the
way of being of P.

We can distinguish between temporal modality (concerning operators like today,

tomorrow etc.), epistemic modalities (which uses operators like believe, know), deontic
modalities which are concerned with morality and finally, alethic modalities. The Greek word
ἀλήθεια (Althea), which translates as “truth”, specify the way of being true of the entities
referred to by the expression to which they are applied.1

We use the sign “□” for the operator “necessity” and “◊” for the operator possibility.
A logical operator is a function that denotes a logical operation. Let’s take the example of the
operator and (&). Applied to a proposition (e.g., A & B), the truth-function of the proposition
depends on the values assigned to A and B. The truth table for conjunction tells us that a
proposition of this type is true only when A and B are both true, and false in any other case.

Table 1. The truth function of the operator “&”

A B A&B
1 1 1
1 0 0
0 1 0
0 0 0

1
Borghini, Andrea. A critical introduction to the metaphysics of modality. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. PP 10

3
It’s easy to see from the onset that we will run into some troubles with the modal operators.
The basic assumption used in Table 1 is that the truth value can be either 1 or 0, never both
and never different degrees of truth, like in the Many-Valued Logic. But what about the
operator of possibility? How can we determine if a proposition is possibly true or possibly
false, in order to assign the truth value to a proposition like ◊P? I will present this problem
later on when I will present the problem of truth makers. For now, let’s return to the basics.

We can speak about modality also in ordinary language and it is very important to
distinguish between the modal operators and modal adverbs. Enunciative operators, like “it is
possible that” and is “necessary that” modify the meaning of an entire sentence and thus the
scope of the operator “□” in the formula “□ (P v Q & R)” is the whole parenthesis. We can
also speak about modal adverbs, which have a smaller scope. Examples of such adverbs are
necessarily, possibly, impossibly and the like. For example, the scope of the operator in the
sentence

“◊P & Q” is only the proposition P.

One of the biggest controversies in the world of modal metaphysics is whether modal
expressions really express concepts. There are many philosophers that deny that alethic
modalities can express concepts. Modal skepticism denies this by saying that we are not truly
able to understand what are we speaking of. Modal expressivists claim that what is at stake
are just sentiments, and not concepts.

Another problem that divides philosophers is that between modalists and non-
modalists. The modalist conception claims that alethic modalities cannot be analyzed in the
terms of other concepts. In other words, they claim that modal operators are primal and they
cannot be further analyzed using different methods, so the analysis stops there.

In order to analyze modal concepts some philosophers used the notion of possible
worlds. Depending on the philosopher we are talking about, the ontological status of a
possible world is different. For example, Modal Realism, which is central to the philosophy
of David Lewis, has as its main tenet that there is an infinity of worlds, and each and every
one of them is as real or concrete as ours. I will briefly present this view, along with the
opposing one, ersatzism, in the third chapter of this work.

Another thing that must be mentioned in this opening chapter is that there is a
plentitude of modalities, not only the alethic ones. Deontic modality deals with what is

4
permitted and what is forbidden, temporal logics with what it will always be or what may
possibly be and so on.

In this thesis I will focus mainly on alethic modality and what makes modal
statements true or false and then I shall present some ontological views about the possible
worlds and possibilia, a term that denotes a possible object. I will focus on the works of Kit
Fine, David Lewis, Graeme Forbes and other seminal philosophers writing on the topic of the
metaphysics of modality. I will explore their concept about possible worlds, truth-making and
other related concepts.

5
 Chapter 2
Modalism

Modalism claims that we cannot undertake an analysis of modal concepts. At its core,
modalism states that modal claims exist ontologically speaking, and that modal sentences
express facts about the world.

I will start this chapter by discussing the postscript of the book Worlds, Times and
Selves since it represents the foundation of modalism. This postscript is written by Kit Fine, a
contemporary philosopher whose works I will often cite in this thesis.

Arthur Prior is a logician who cowritten the book, and he has two basic views about
modality. The first one is the claim that modal idioms are primitive (i.e., not based on other
concepts) and only actual objects really exist. This claim is called by Fine Modalism or
Priorism. The second one attests that the tenses (it will be, it was the case) are primitive and
only actual objects exist. This is called Actualism. Combined, the view advocated by Prior is
termed Modal Actualism.

Modal actualism is incompatible with the possible worlds analysis. The modal
actualist thinks that possible objects (or possibilia) do not actually exist, and hence we don’t
need possible worlds to analyze them. “The possible is simply a manner in which things
happen, so the possible exists as a mode, not an object.”2. The modal primitives are adverbial
and a quantifier will range only over actual objects. Compared to the possibilists, where the
possible exists as an object, the proposition “Possibly some individual is not actual” is false
for the actualist, because there can be no instance in which this sentence is true.

Kit Fine agrees with Prior on modal actualism, and the big question in the postscript is
what is the modal actualist to make of the possibilist’s discourse. He wants to follow the
technical programme of logical reconstruction that Prior developed throughout the book.

In the first section, Fine analyses the language of S5, the only correct and complete
logical system for modal logic. The idea is that ◊P is true at a possible world and □P is true in
all possible worlds. The axioms of S5 are the following:

K:

T:
2
Prior, Arthur N. "Worlds, times, and selves." (1977). PP 117

6
 5:

When we analyze the relation “P is true at w”, where w is a possible world, we see that we
can express it in first order logic, where we can say that possible worlds represent predicates.
The aforementioned proposition can be expressed as “P’w’ “where P’ stands for a possible
worlds predicate corresponding to P.

Prior said that each possible world can be treated as a world-proposition. A world-
proposition (noted Qp) is true in just one world alone, or in logical language

◊ (P & q(q→□(p→q))).

The formula reads that Qp is true if it is possible that p is true and necessarily implies all
truths. Prior suggested that we can replace the universal quantification over possible worlds
to a quantification over world-propositions.

A proposition ◊P can be translated as ( if we quantify over possible worlds, and then

reverse the formula into first-order logic and quantify over possible worlds:

))

This quantification over world-propositions says that P is strictly implied by some world
proposition. Thus, the Qp translation expresses the idea that the true world proposition enjoys
the (necessary) property of strictly implying P’, where P’ is a proposition.

The correctness of this translation, named by Fine “reverse translation”, rests upon
two main assumptions. Firstly, necessarily world-propositions exist with necessity. The
second one states that for every possible world, there is at least a proposition true in that
world.

Fine continues his inquiry by introducing a better language that provides some
ontological simplicity. I will briefly present it here.

The original modal language contains a predicate E for existence; The variables x, y…
(in italics) are the actualist variables for a modal language, and x, y… are the possibilist
variables of the classical language. The relation A is true in the possible world w’ is
expressed in first-order logic as it follows: A’(w). The proposition “Rxy is true at w’” where
R is the predicate, is expressed in the following way: “R’xyw’”. The R’ stands for a possible
world predicate corresponding to R. This language is a first-order polyadic and two-sorted

7
language, because in contains variables x, y for possible individuals as well as variables w, v
for possible worlds.

The reverse-translation cannot be easily done. The difficulty stems from the fact that
possible worlds must satisfy the condition that if then is true at a possible world that an
instance of B(x) must be true at that world.

Another thing that Fine introduces here is the replacement of possible individuals with
a property that can be possibly instantiated. If a property φ is the individual essence of x, it
means that φ is true for x and only for x. Each individual has an essence which is the sum of
its necessary properties.

In this way Fine eliminates the possible worlds and individuals in favor of
propositions and quantifiers, in favor of an intensional approach regarding possible worlds
rather than an extensional account preferred by Prior.

The next problem addressed by Fine is that of Barcan-type principles, namely that
propositions, properties and sets necessarily exist. In the case of sets, a counterexample is
given. Because sets are considered abstract, their existence is considered necessary. But in a
set whose sole member is a contingent existence, like certain actual-world objects and people,
the set will also have a contingent existence. The conclusion we can draw from this is that if
some individual contingently exist, so does some set. If all sets necessarily exist the so do all
individuals. But this argument doesn’t seem quite right. The argument put in the logical form
looks like this: if X range over sets and x over sets and individuals, E is the existence
predicate and stands for membership, the argument goes in the following way:

(1) (Supposition)

(2) (by set theory)

(3) (from 1 and 3 by modal logic)

(4) assumption

(5) (from 4 by modal logic)

(6) (from 3 and 6 by classical logic)

8
Based on modal logic, from the assumption in 4 which claims that if an object belongs to a
set, then necessarily the object exists if the set exists. Two further assumptions follow by
modal logic:

(7) ∀x ∀X (x ∈ X→ (EX →Ex))

(8)))

In this manner, the members of a set are preserved trough possible worlds. Those members
are essential to a set identity. This follows from (7). (8) claims that an existent set cannot
have non-existent objects, so the set cannot be constructed if the members do not exist. If we
deny (8) extensionality fails because two sets might have the same existent objects but
different non-existent members. Fine regards both (7) and (8) as correct essentialist principles
with respect to the nature of sets.

The importance of the distinction rests in the fact that the admission of contingent sets
opens the field of modal set theory. Now Fine writes about the criterion of existence of sets.
In the possible world terms, the necessary and sufficient condition for a set to exist in a world
is that each of its members exist in that world. Because of de Fundierungs’ axiom, a set exist
in a world iff each individual in its transitive closure exists in that world.

The problem comes when we try to determine the criterion in modal terms. The
weakness of the modal system presented above are very weak from a modal point of view,
even the sense of proposition being obscure. In this context of modal logic, the most natural
way of reduction is to say that propositions are identical if they are necessarily equivalent.

Fine tries to give a criterion of propositional existence. A linguistic criterion states

that a proposition exists in a world if it can be expressed without any reference to possible
individuals that do not exist in the world. The equivalent non-linguistic criterion says that a
proposition exists in a world iff the proposition is true in neither or both of any two worlds
whenever those worlds are indistinguishable with respect to the given world; the proposition
mut not distinguish between indistinguishable worlds.3

Some sets, propositions and properties contingently exist. But there are large classes
of entities that exist with necessity. A set is pure if it is built up from the null set. A property
is purely general if it can be expressed without reference to any individuals.

3
Idem.

9
 His text continues to offer an apparatus for reverse translation filled with many
technical details that I won’t discuss here. I consider Fine’s attempt to make sense of the
possibilist discourse in terms of actualism a very interesting project, because I think he offers
an interesting logical apparatus for modal actualism. I will continue to discuss other theories
regarding modalism in the pages that follow.

There exists in contemporary philosophy a view called by Vetter “new modal

actualism”. This view is characterized by the fact that the new actualists don’t feel the need
to provide an actualist account of possible worlds. In this view, possible worlds are a useful
device in modal logic but they don’t have much to do with the metaphysics of modality.
These modal actualists want to provide an account of modality in a direct manner. The aim is
therefore to identify in the actual world the grounds, sources and truthmakers of modal truths.

Those theories deny the fact that possible worlds provide a good analysis of modal
statements. Modal talk is to be discussed in terms of essences, dispositions or other
proprieties. I will discus actualism in the next paragraphs.4

Another contemporary logician, Graeme Forbes, thought about modalism as resting

on three principles: it supplements the language of first-order modal logic with the operators
for possibility and necessity, it upholds the idea that those modal sentences have a truth-value
and is a matter of brute fact if a sentence is necessarily or possibly true or false. But
modalism runs into certain troubles. The first one is pointed out by Joseph Melia saying that
the modalist finds it problematic to translate certain sentences into the artificial language of
the theory.

The views of Melia on modalism are expressed by Forbes in a paper that I will briefly
present here. Modalism is understood by Forbes as “the view that the fundamental modal
idioms are the operators 'possibly' ('◊'), 'necessarily' ('□') and 'actually' ('A') and that other
means of expressing modal notions are ultimately to be explained in terms of these three; in
particular, quantificational locutions such as 'some possibility' and 'every possible world' are
to be explained by operators and not vice-versa.”5

In other words, all the modal talk can be reduced according to Forbes into three
simple operators. However, using just these three symbols is not enough to express all the

4
Vetter, Barbara. "Recent work: Modality without possible worlds." (2011): 742-754.
5
Forbes, Graeme. "Melia on modalism." Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the
Analytic Tradition 68, no. 1 (1992): 57

10
sentences that may transpire, and this situation is named the objection from expressive power:
“any purported operator language which allows us to say enough of what we want to say is
surreptitiously quantificational.”6 Melia creates a quantificational language LEX which
quantifies over possible worlds. For example, the proposition “there are two worlds with
mutually disjoint domains” will be expressed in LEX as follows:

(∃W2) (∀w) (∀x) [W1Ex↔~W2Ex]

This is clearly a quantification over possible worlds. But Forbes uses another language that
uses indices, so the same proposition will be expressed in the following way:

◊1 ◊2 □(x) [A1 Ex ↔ ~ A2 Ex]

The main objective of this paper is to show that the modal operators are basic and must be
used in favor of quantification over possible worlds. Forbes gave the example of the
following proposition: “It could have been that there could have been something which does
not actually exist.” Which is formalized as follows:

◊1◊(x) ~A1Ex.

I used an excerpt from Forbes’ article Melia on Modalism to show what is the formal
language most adequate for expressing modal sentences in the writings of the two thinkers.
While Forbes, being a modalist, sticks with the symbols □ and ◊, Melia is skeptical about the
capacity of these symbols to capture the meaning of necessity and possibility in natural
language.

Joseph Melia wrought subsequent works criticizing modalism. Let’s consider the
following sentence:

(A) “There could have been more stars than there are”

This sentence compares the stars existent in the actual world and those existent in a possible
world. For the modalist, this is tricky business because he doesn’t have in his ontology more
than one world. In Languages of Possibility: An Essay in Philosophical Logic, Forbes
explicates how can it be drawn a comparison between actuality and what might actually be
the case. There he tries to enrich his theory with terms that have the same function as a
possible world. He introduces a term An for every world Wn’.

6
Ibidem.

11
 The term’s role is to relativize the interpretation of a sentence to a certain context. In
this way, regarding the aforementioned proposition, Forbes is able to relativize the part that
concerns the number of stars in our world to the actual actuality, and the other part, the
possible number of stars, to another actuality. Melia argues that the meaning of actuality in
this context is obscure unless is interpreted in the spirit of the possible-worlds semantics.

Melia has a different way of interpreting (A). His form of interpretation differs from
Forbes’ understanding in proposing a dissociation between the artificial language and the
world it speaks of. There is no need for paraphrasing (A) in an artificial language. Thus,
Melia will interpret (A) in the following way

In the actual world, there are x number of stars.

It is possible that: The number of stars is greater than x.

These propositions can be easily translated in formal language, because the first does not
comprise any modal terms, and the latter simply uses the operator of possibility. This method
closely follows the methodology proposed by David Armstrong, which states that an artificial
language cannot completely substitute the natural language when a philosophical problem is
in question.

As stated above, the main principle of modalism is that the facts about modality are
brute. So far, we saw that modalists don’t want to make use of the concept of possible worlds.
But over the past two decades, new versions of modalism appeared that use the concept of
possible worlds. One of the variants was proposed by Charles Chihara in the book The worlds
of Possibility. Among the views criticized by Chihara, one of them is Forbes’s modalism.

I want to briefly mention the realist and anti-realist view about possible worlds. David
Lewis and Alvin Plantinga are realists regarding possible worlds, because when they speak
about them, they consider them real entities.

Forbes is an anti-realist because he takes the modal expressions in quantified modal

logic (QML) to be about brute modal facts. Chihara too doesn’t think that it is possible to
provide an analysis of modal concepts in QML, so his position can be considered a modalist
one.

But Chihara view is different from other modalists in the fact that he upholds that
modalism is compatible with the acceptance of possible-worlds semantics. His argument runs

12
as follows: we appraise the truth of a non-modal statement according to an interpretation of
its terms, which specifies what the terms are about. Consider the sentence:

(B) John is happy.

An interpretation about (B) is about John, the CEO of a company. Another interpretation is
about John being a bus driver in New York. Each interpretation will provide a different
understanding of John, so the truth of proposition (B) is reliant on the interpretation. The
main point of Chihara is that we can regard the possible worlds semantics as analogous to
truth-under-interpretation. Thus, every scenario where (B) is true can be viewed as an
instance of a possible world.

Many regarded modalism as metaphysically suspicious, because it introduces brute

modal facts without any story of what grounds such facts. Jonathan Lowe wrote a paper
called What is the Source of Our modal Knwoledge of Modal Truths? where he suggests to
find a foundation in the modal entities called essences. His view is inspired by the works of
Kit Fine. So, in the next paragraphs, I will express some of Fine’s thoughts about essences
and essentialism and then return to the ideas of Lowe.

Essentialism is the philosophical doctrine that among the properties objects have,
some of them are accidental and some essential to the object at issue. This view is called
modal essentialism. Some properties are non-trivial (they tell us something more about the
object) and some are essential. In a possible worlds framework, an object possesses an
essential property in all possible worlds, and an accidental property in some possible worlds.
Quine poses a challenge to the modal actualist consisting in demanding necessary and
sufficient conditions which would fill the right-hand side of the following biconditional: “An
entity x, in a world w1, is numerically identical to an entity, y, in a distinct world, W2 iff x in
W1 and X in W2 satisfy conditions…". This is also called the problem of crossworld identity.

The answer to Quine’s challenge, offered by proponents of modal essentialism such as

Plantinga and Forbes, have to do with individual essences: ”An entity, x, in a world W1, is
numerically identical to an entity, y, in a distinct world W2 iff x in W1 and Y in W2 instantiates
the same individual essence.” 7

7
Koslicki, Kathrin. "Essence and Identity." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality, pp. 113-140. Oxford
University Press, 2013.

13
 Fine recognize that the concept of essence has been elucidated in modal terms,
pointing that not only a proposition can be necessary, but also an object may be said to be
necessarily in a certain way (de re modality). These lines of thought go as far as Aristotle. In
the contemporary period of analytic philosophy, essences are mainly understood de re. The
modal approach to essentialist metaphysics is so widely used in today’s analytic philosophy
because of the apparition of QML. In this way, philosophers were better at formulating
essentialist claims and, with the clarification of the underlying modal notions, to ascertain
their truths.

But in his paper Essence and Modality: The Second Philosophical Perspectives
Lecture, Fine makes a staggering claim: ”The contemporary assimilation of essence to
modality is fundamentally misguided, and that, as a consequence, the corresponding
conception of metaphysics should be given up.”8 His point is that the notion of essence is not
to be understood in modal terms. According to this paper, the improved view is the one that
assimilates essence to definition. In this way, we will gain a good model of how this concept
works.

According to one modal view on essence, an object is taken to have a property

essentially just in case it is necessary that the object has the property if it exists. Another
view, endorsed by Moore, claims that an object is taken to have a property essentially just in
case it is necessary that the object has the property if it is identical to that very object.

Fine accepts that if an object essentially has a certain property, then it is necessary that
it has the property, but he objects the converse. If we consider a set whose sole member is
Socrates, we can say about that set, called singleton, that is necessary that if Socrates exists
then it belongs to the singleton. However, it is not an essential property of Socrates to belong
to a set, so we can say that belonging to a singleton is not a property of being Socrates.

Another example is the subsequent one. If we consider two unconnected objects, for
example Socrates and the Eifel Tower, it is necessary that the two objects are distinct. But it
is not a necessary property of neither of them to be distinct from one another.

One more difficulty in which we may run if we try to give a modalist account of
essences has to do with necessary existence. If we consider Socrates, we can say that it is
necessarily the case that he exists if he exists. But this is different from saying that Socrates

8
Fine, Kit. "Essence and modality: The second philosophical perspectives lecture." Philosophical perspectives 8
(1994): PP 4

14
exits essentially. The metaphysics of identity is affected by the fact that we cannot give a
modal account of essence, because it shows that even when all questions concerning
necessity have been resolved, questions about their source will still remain. The conclusion
so far is that the subject cannot be taken to be constituted, in principle or practice, by its
claims of necessity.

Although the modal criterion is disappointing for us, there is certainly a connection
between the concept necessity and that of essence. “Any essentialist attribution will give rise
to a necessary truth; if certain objects are essentially related then it is necessarily true that
the objects are so related (or necessarily true given that the objects exist).”9.

Many essentialist truths may have their source in the identities of different objects.
For example, ‘2’ being a number have its source in the identity of ‘2’, Socrates being a man
has its source in Socrates being a man etc.

One of the reasons one cannot take essences and metaphysical necessity to be of the
same nature is that in the case of metaphysical necessity all objects are treated equally as
possible grounds of necessary truth. It’s easy to overlook this by confusing the subject with
the source.

It is natural to assume that given a necessary subject-predicate proposition, the subject

of the proposition is the source of the necessity, but the very concept of necessity is
indifferent to which of the objects is taken to be its subject. Fine proposes the view that we
should consider metaphysical necessity as a special case of essence, and not vice-versa.

Furthermore, besides these views about essences and returning to Lowe’s project, I
must point out that Fine argues that the two basic operators of modality cannot provide an
adequate conceptual richens to the concept of modality. He thus advocates the adoption of a
variety of “necessity operators”, including one for essential dependence.

Lowe’s view is that metaphysical modalities are grounded in essence. In other words,
all truths about what is metaphysically necessary or possible are either straightforwardly
essential truths or else obtained in virtue of the essence of things. Real definitions are
essences.

This view is identical to Fine’s. As human beings, we can understand these kinds of
real definitions and thereby grasp essences. Henceforth, we can have some knowledge of

9
Idem. PP 9

15
metaphysical modality by knowing at least from time to time that something is necessary or
possible.

From this we can extract three theoretical claims. The first one is that the
metaphysical foundation of modality is found in essences. Lowe’s project thus sets out to find
truth-makers for modal sentences of QML, and because of the theory’s rejection of possible
worlds view, this truth makers have to be concrete and spatiotemporal entities. These entities
are the essences.

The second claim is inspired by Fine’s rejection of the theory that essential properties
are those that belong to an individual in every possible world at which that individual exists.
Lowe’s understanding of essences rests on the idea of real definitions: “A real definition of
an entity, E, is to be understood as a proposition which tells us, in the most perspicuous
fashion, what E is—or, more broadly, since we do not want to restrict ourselves solely to the
essences of actually existing things, what E is or would be.”10

This view makes essences identical with the defined entities. X’s (where X is an
object) essence is X and not a set of properties that characterize X. Ontologically, Lowe’s
system commits only to a single type of entities: the actual, real entities. Once we have X, we
have also X’s essence and this gives us sufficient metaphysical foundation for modal claims
about X.

Essentialism can be a way to view modality and Lowe’s perspective has as its main
advantage the fact that in can provide truth-making conditions for modal claims. However,
the bases on which his proposal rests are controversial. It is not so easy to offer a real
definition to any entity in order to find its essence, and further clarification regarding how a
real definition should be constructed are required.

Although problematic in my view, this approach is an interesting one because it

combines the modalist and the realist theories of modality, creating a new framework for
further research.

10
Borghini, Andrea. A critical introduction to the metaphysics of modality. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. PP 84

16
 Chapter 3
Modal Realism and Ersatzism

Modal Realism is an ontological view about modality made famous by David Lewis.
His views about possible worlds are extravagant to say the least. According to Lewis, “there
exist possible worlds other than the actual world that we inhabit.”11 In this case, the term
exists it’s taken at face value, as in the case of the following example: There exists an x such
that x is on my table, or formally (∃ ) . In other words, a possible world W’ (That is, a
world that is not our world) have the same ontological status as W* (i.e, our actual world),
the world that contains us.

This is a very unusual idea. Before proceeding with the presentation of this theory, I
want to distinguish between the theory of multiverses and the theory of equally existent
worlds concerning their ontological status. The theory of multiverse presupposes that
different dimension can interfere with our actual world. But this is certainly not the theory
advocated by Lewis.

The multiverse theory also says that different dimensions (or worlds) can actually
communicate between each other. So, if another dimension may interfere with our world, in
terms of Lewis’ theory, this interference will still occur in the actual world. The theory
proposed by Lewis is very different because the worlds can never interfere with one another.
I will explain in later paragraphs how his theory works, but for now I hope that I made a clear
distinction between the two theories.

I will cite here Koyama`s article because she identified three main theses of Lewisian
theory, in a very elegant way. According to her article, the three theses are the following:

Existence: There exist possible worlds as well as the actual world.

Concreteness: Possible worlds are just as concrete as the actual world is.

Plenitude: Absolutely every way that the actual world might be is a way in which some
possible world is.

11
Koyama, Tora. "Against Lewisian Modal Realism from a Metaontological Point of View." Philosophia 45, no.
3 (2017): 1207-1225.

17
 The first thesis, regarding the existence of possible worlds, is called possibilism. Is the
view contrary to the more conservative actualist position, which as I said before states that
there is only a single world, which is the actual world. The second thesis is about the realism
of the world. When we say that possible worlds are just as concrete as the actual world is, we
give possible worlds the same ontological status as the actual world. The third thesis states
that the actual world is just a possible world, that is to say the actual world is just an instance
of a possible world in which we live.

The possibilist realist (PR) considers that apart from possible worlds, there exists non-
actual possible objects, and those are real and genuine objects. When a PR states that there
exists a possible object, he takes the verb “exists” to have the same linguistic meaning as
when an actualist says that “Actual objects exist”. The domain of discourse of the verb
“exists” is larger for PR than for an actualist.

A possible object therefore exists either in the actual world or in some possible world.
The most important thing to say here is that all realms of existence (i.e., either the actual
world or possible worlds) are on a par with one another.

Actuality for David Lewis is connected with the parts that embrace our existence in
the world. For example, there are many realms that include us. Those realms can be rooms,
days, galaxies etc. So, Lewis takes the largest spatiotemporal realm to fix our actuality.
Therefore, a possible object is simply a part of a maximal spatiotemporally whole.

Next, I will write about Lewis’ modal counterpart theory. According to this concept,
every possible object is constricted to a single possible world. For example, if we say that I
could’ve been the CEO of Google is to say that in a possible world, I really am the CEO of
Google. At this possible non-actual world, a counterpart of me who is almost identical to me
is the CEO of Google. There are other views about counterpart theory, but I won’t discuss
them throughout this thesis.

I think that his theory about modal realism has some theoretical advantages. Firstly,
unlike any other theory about possible objects or worlds, the modal entities are reduced to
simple non-modal entities. An object which is possible exists at a possible world,12 and
everything that is necessary exists at all possible worlds. Thus, modal realism provides an

As I mentioned before, to exist here has the same meaning as when an actualist says that there exist three
12

objects on the table).

18
analysis of modality in terms of existence. So, the theory of modal realism is the only theory
that says that possible objects can exist in the same way as actual objects do.

The second theoretical benefit of the modal realism rests in the metaphysical
robustness of the theory. Modal realism holds that the actual world does not contain all of the
possible objects that exists, and therefore the actual world is not complete in terms of objects.
There can be many other objects that there are in this world, even objects that we can imagine
or describe.13

The theory of ersatzism has been one of the fiercest opponents of modal realism. The
main point of juncture is that ersatz objects, at the semantic level, deny the theory of
counterparts. According to ersatzism, the theory that there can be no overlap between two
worlds doesn’t seem right.

For the ersatizts, the most natural way to think about possibility is to accept as true
that there is only one world (i.e., The actual world), and this world is that in which we live.
So metaphysically speaking, there exists only one world, the actual world, and the possible
worlds are just surrogates of the actual world. David Lewis writes about this conception in
the third chapter of his volume, On the Plurality of Worlds. This idea seems to me more
convincing since it doesn’t require such a high level of ontological commitment. The only
ontological commitment we need to make is that there exists a world, namely the actual
world. I will present next what Lewis has to say about ersatzism

In his own words, “the ersatzers say that instead of an incredible plurality of concrete
worlds, we can have one world only, and countless abstract entities representing ways that
this world might have been. Likewise, we can have abstract entities representing ways that
donkeys or what not might have been.”14. So, from the commencement we see that ersatzism
is concerned with abstract entities, rather than with concrete worlds and objects.

“We need not disagree extravagantly with common sense about how many worlds,
donkeys, atoms, or gods there are. The abstract representations are not worlds, donkeys,
atoms, or gods. So, there is no affront to common sense ideas about what there is.”15. This
paragraph brings in the discussion the idea of common sense. It is more commonsensical to
believe that possibilia are abstract entities rather than real existing objects. So ersatzism

13
Borghini, Andrea. A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality. Bloomsbury Critical Introductions
to Contemporary Metaphysics. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. PP 91-144
14
Lewis, David K. On the plurality of worlds. Vol. 322. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Pp 136
15
Ibidem.

19
seems to offer us something that Lewis’ theory couldn’t, that is a more natural approach to
the metaphysics of modality.

He goes on by saying that the abstract objects are alike some mathematical objects,
for example sets. This idea of an abstract realm offers us surrogates that can play the same
role as the concrete possibilia, objects which are rejected by ersatzers.

One of these objects represented by ersatz surrogates are worlds. An ersatz world is
actualized when it represents completely the real or concrete world. The other worlds are still
possible worlds, not actualized yet or non-actualizable (e.g., the world where Napoleon won
the battle of Waterloo.)

Apart from worlds, individual objects can also exist as surrogates until actualized.
Lewis concludes this discussion by saying that “Unactualized ersatz worlds and individuals
differ from actualized ones only by their failure to represent anything correctly”16 and by
correctly he means that they fail to represent objects in the actual world.

The concepts described so far are the core beliefs of ersatzism, but this metaphysical
doctrine has many variations, namely there is not only one type of ersatzism. The two main
approaches to this theory are linguistic ersatzism and combinatorialism.

Linguistic ersatzism

This approach considers a possible world as a surrogate of a set of sentences. Versions

of linguistic ersatzism can be attributed to some of the funders of possible-worlds semantics
like Rudolph Carnap and Jaakko Hintikka. The key idea is that in the same way a proposition
is true according to a certain story, so a proposition can be true in a certain world understood
as an infinitely long set of sentences.

The proposition: ‘Hamlet killed Polonius’ is true in the play Hamlet, by William
Shakespeare, therefore is true in a certain story. Likewise, all the possible worlds can be
conceived as stories and so they can give an interpretation to the possible worlds semantics.
So, according to the linguistic ersatizts, a possible world in a complete and consistent
description in a certain language of a state of things. From this it follows that possibilia are
just sets of sentences.

16
Idem. PP 138

20
 The difference between the possible worlds and our world lies in the fact that the
former are mere descriptions of how thing could have been, and therefore these worlds are
not concrete. Our world differs because it is made of real persons and objects rather than
simple descriptions about them. Unlike the modal realism of David Lewis, the actual world is
metaphysically privileged and the big difference between our world and possible worlds is
that the latter consist in sets of sentences.

There are certain requirements that must be fulfilled for a set of sentences to count as
a possible world. As I said earlier, the set of sentences must be complete and consistent. A set
of sentences is complete (or maximal) when, for every possible scenario in that world, the set
contains a description or a negation of that scenario. The criterion of consitency is met when
in the set, there is no occurrence of two descriptions of scenarios such that one is the negation
of the other.

In is not in the programme of linguistic ersatzism to reduce the modal talk to non-
modal entities (as in modal realism or modal actualism). Linguistic ersatzism is successful if
it can provide a proper analysis of modal entities in terms of sets of sentences.
Metaphysically speaking, linguistic ersatzism has an advantage over modal realism, because
it can better explain what is a possible world. It is sufficient to show that a language exists
independently of being used, therefore showing that possible worlds exist without us talking
about them.

Lewis, however, is not satisfied with this approach. The point of discontent is the fact
that linguistic ersatzism is not able to supply a sufficient number of possible worlds to satisfy
our theoretical need for an account of possibility.

There are two ways a linguistic ersatizts can generate possible worlds. The first
method is very simple, using natural language as a mean to describe them. But the second
method is more interesting and systematic, using what is called a Lagadonian Language. I
won’t describe the technicalities here, but I will state the central point of the argument.

Believing in the fact that our discourse about possibility has meaning, then there
exists an infinite number of scenarios. Any number of objects can exist, so is not
contradictory to say that an infinite number of objects could exist. And so, we encounter the
main problem with the theory of linguistic ersatzism: how can the linguistic ersatizts generate
complete worlds, when the criterion of completeness clearly specifies that a description of all
states of things must be given.

21
 Lewis observes that there can be many more worlds that those able to be expressed in
a language. Not only objects, but also concepts like time and space could be infinite, so in our
search of the best theory of modality, I think that linguistic ersatzism should be considered as
debatable.

Combinatorialism

This ersatizts approach was developed by the philosopher David Armstrong. The main
principle of this approach is that possible worlds are constructed as recombinations of pieces
of the actual world. This idea belongs to ersatzism because the worlds that result after the
process of recombination are surrogates of the actual world. The way that combinatorialism
define possibility is in terms of actual entities plus the principle of recombination. This
principle is regarded, much like modal realism, as a metaphysical principle.

One of the essential terms in combinatorialism is ‘state of affairs. This is a type of entity
similar to the concept of scenario, but it differs in many aspects so I will use it as it is.
According to this view, a sentence is considered a state of affairs if it is made of various
constituents that are arranged in a certain order and so we can say that the sentence express a
structured whole. An example of this sentence is the following:

(1) ‘John is the CEO of Google and Mark is a junior developer for a small firm.’

However, a state of affairs needs not to be a structured whole. A proposition as simple as (2)
‘It snows’ doesn’t contain constitutes that can be reconstructed. However, the case of the
previous sentence is an isolated one, and the majority of the states of affairs must have at
least two related constituents.

There are two types of constituents identified by Armstrong: individuals and

universals. John and Mark are individuals, while being a CEO and being a junior developer
are universals. The reason for this is that a universal can exist and can be made sense of in
more than one spatio-temporal region. In other words, there can be many junior developers
working for small firms but Mark can only be in a single place at a time and thus he is just an
instantiation of being a junior developer. So, we can draw the conclusion that individuals
instantiate universals, while universals cannot instantiate individuals. Mark instantiates
‘being a junior developer’ but Mark is not instantiated.

These concepts are necessary for Armstrong to give a full analysis of the worlds. The
concrete world is a realm of individuals that instantiate a large number of universals. These

22
entities (i.e., individuals and universals) can be rearranged in order to obtain new states of
affairs, but these states of affairs are possible just in the case that they are obtained through a
legitimate recombination of constituents of at least one actual state of affairs. Notice here the
word actual. The existence of an actual state of affairs is mandatory for the formation of
possible worlds.

As I pointed above, this is an ersatizts theory so it must offer possible worlds that are
surrogates of our actual world. I will now return to (1) and explain how we can obtain a
different scenario using the process of recombination.

It is possible that the roles of John and Mark can be reversed, thus obtaining the
following sentence:

(3) ‘Mark is the CEO of Google and John is a junior developer for a small firm.’

If (3) is a legitimate recombination of the states of affairs described in (1), then (3) is a
possible sentence. Thus, we can infer a new proposition:

(4) It is possible that: Mark is the CEO of Google and John is a junior developer for a
small firm.

Now the truth conditions for (4) are explained in terms of the truth condition of (1).

This is the way that combinatorialism works. It is a theory that offers a coherent
conception about the theory of possibility, offering a new way for creating possible worlds. I
personally think that the weak spot of this theory lies in the fact that it is ambiguous what a
legitimate recombination is. There are many ways in which we can construct new state of
affairs, but these are still dependent on language. Recombinations that result in sentences that
doesn’t respect the syntax of the language in use can be absurd (e.g., one can obtain the
following sentence: From“X likes Y” and “A admires B” we cannot obtain “X likes admires”
since it doesn’t respect the rules of sentence formation in English, hence producing a
nonsensical proposition).

Before drawing the final conclusions of this thesis, I want to talk briefly about modal
skepticism. Therefore, I will dedicate the following chapter to this topic. 17

17
Borghini, Andrea. A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality. Bloomsbury Critical Introductions
to Contemporary Metaphysics. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. PP 115-139

23
 Chapter 4
Modal Skepticism and Conclusions

So far, I’ve been talking about theories about modal concepts. Although the theories
were very different, they all shared a common idea: modal expressions express concepts.
Modalism doesn’t use conceptual reduction, while the other theories treat modal expressions
in terms of possible worlds. In this chapter I will talk about those theories that don’t claim the
fact that modal expressions express concepts, namely skepticism and expressivism.

When we talk about modal skepticism, one name comes to mind: Willard Quine.
Quine’s concern is with the semantic level of QML, namely with the possible world
semantics. For him, certain de dicto modalities can be analyzed properly but de re modalities
cannot be examined suitably. De dicto modalities have to do with the whole proposition,
while de re modalities are about the object. Both terms, dicto and re come from Latin. Dicto
stands for saying, and re comes from res, which means object.

A proposition of the form express a de dicto modality because the scope of the
possibility operator ranges over the whole conditional. In other words, the diamond says that
the whole proposition is possible. The operator doesn’t add anything to the content of the
proposition, it just says the mode of existence of it.

An example of de re modality is the sentence . The scope of the diamond is smaller

and it refers only to one part of the conditional, not the whole. In natural language, quine said
that the only legitimate use of modal terms is found in de dicto modalities, of the form “it’s
possible that: I am walking”.

Quine is of the opinion that the question “what does it take for a certain situation to be
possible?” cannot be raised in relation to de re modalities. Since sentences with de re
modalities contain ambiguous terms to which no clear semantic function can be assigned, we
must refrain from using such sentences to express our philosophical opinions. As for the de
dicto modalities, Quine's solution is to interpret them as attitudes of the speaker towards real
sentences, this interpretation is typically referred to as metalinguistic because he claims that
modal statements are affirmations in the speaker's language, in relation to each other to the
statements of another language called object language. Therefore, for Quine, a sentence that
contains a de dicto modality does not express a possible situation, but the speaker's
perspective on a non-modal situation.18

24
 According to Juhani Yli-Vakkuri, Quinean modal skepticism can be reduced to the
following sentence: “For all propositions p, we never know that □P.” This kind of
skepticism is not skepticism of counterfactuals or other unspecific metaphysical issues: it
allows us to know all kinds of things, but never that something is necessarily so.19

For John Divers, “the crucial question of modal metaphysics is the ideological
question of whether there are primitive modal aspects of reality.”20 The first falsehood about
Quine’s modal skepticism is that he claimed that the characteristic construction of QML, “,”
was unintelligible. Divers claims that Quine wanted to say something different.

What is not obviously understandable is the characteristic construction when we bring

the concepts of quantification and modality as usually understood. By quantification as it is
normally understood, Quine meant a first-order quantification that encompasses the known
objects of science: sets, physical objects (and various "sets" of them, such as tablets of atoms
and mountains).

It’s clear to see that Quinean skepticism is understood in different ways by various
authors, but the main view is that some philosophical claims containing modal terms cannot
be clearly understood according to Quine.

Through this thesis I presented various theories about modality and how we can make
sense of them. I presented first the modal actualist view, which doesn’t support the possible
worlds theory of describing modality. Then I proceeded by presenting various possible
worlds theories, including ersatzism, combinatorialism and I finally briefly offered an
account of Quinean skepticism about the possibility of the modal statements to express modal
concepts.

I think that every theory presented here has its flaws, and as with other philosophical
theories, we can`t say for sure that one is correct. However, I wish to offer the criterion by
which I judge the most relevant theories, and that is the criterion of ontological commitment.

David Lewis told us that possible worlds exits in a realm of their own, which impose
unto us the acceptance of a new ontological being, namely the possible worlds. I think that

18
Borghini, Andrea. A critical introduction to the metaphysics of modality. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. PP
51-54
19
Yli-Vakkuri, Juhani. "Modal skepticism and counterfactual knowledge." Philosophical Studies 162, no. 3
(2013): 605-623.
20
Divers, John. "How Skeptical Is Quine’s “Modal Skepticism”?." The Monist 100, no. 2 (2017): 194-210.

25
we should stick with those theories that offer us less ontological commitment, and therefore
the theories that don’t force us to accept that possible worlds and possibilia actually exist. So,
the actualists have a strong advantage, because in their ontology is just one world, namely the
actual world.

Even though ersatzism and the possible world semantics seem to offer an important
instrument for QML which doesn’t force us to ontologically commit to the existence of non-
actual entities, I think that we should use this theory as a tool, useful for formal logic, but not
for an account of the metaphysics of modality. Thus, I opt for the metaphysical view of
modal actualists while still considering the possible world semantics useful in doing formal
modal logic.

26
 Bibliography

1. Borghini, Andrea. A critical introduction to the metaphysics of modality. Bloomsbury

Publishing, 2016.
2. Divers, John. "How Skeptical Is Quine’s “Modal Skepticism”?." The Monist 100, no.
2 (2017): 194-210.
3. Fine, Kit. "Essence and modality: The second philosophical perspectives
lecture." Philosophical perspectives 8 (1994): 1-16.
4. Koyama, Tora. "Against Lewisian Modal Realism from a Metaontological Point of
View." Philosophia 45, no. 3 (2017): 1207-1225.
5. Koslicki, Kathrin. "Essence and Identity." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality,
pp. 113-140. Oxford University Press, 2013.
6. Lewis, David K. On the plurality of worlds. Vol. 322. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Pp
136
7. Prior, Arthur N. "Worlds, times, and selves." (1977). PP 117

8. Vetter, Barbara. "Recent work: Modality without possible worlds." (2011): 742-754.

9. Yli-Vakkuri, Juhani. "Modal skepticism and counterfactual

knowledge." Philosophical Studies 162, no. 3 (2013): 605-623.

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