Open AccessCounterparts, Essences and Quantified Modal Logic
Author(s) -
Tomasz Bigaj
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
logic and logical philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.416
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 2300-9802
pISSN - 1425-3305
DOI - 10.12775/llp.2022.001
Subject(s) - modal logic , modal , modality (human–computer interaction) , metaphysics , modal operator , computer science , translation (biology) , dynamic logic (digital electronics) , accessibility relation , s5 , linguistics , philosophy of language , calculus (dental) , mathematics , algorithm , epistemology , philosophy , artificial intelligence , physics , dentistry , transistor , voltage , chemistry , biochemistry , quantum mechanics , medicine , messenger rna , polymer chemistry , gene
It is commonplace to formalize propositions involving essential properties of objects in a language containing modal operators and quantifiers. Assuming David Lewis’s counterpart theory as a semantic framework for quantified modal logic, I will show that certain statements discussed in the metaphysics of modality de re, such as the sufficiency condition for essential properties, cannot be faithfully formalized. A natural modification of Lewis’s translation scheme seems to be an obvious solution but is not acceptable for various reasons. Consequently, the only safe way to express some intuitions regarding essential properties is to use directly the language of counterpart theory without modal operators.