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Introduces readers to the history of necessity and possibility, two modal concepts which play a key role in philosophy.
List of contents
Introduction Max Cresswell, Edwin Mares and Adriane Rini; 1. Aristotle on the necessity of the consequent Adriane Rini; 2. Aristotle on one-sided possibility Marko Malink; 3. Why does Aristotle need a modal syllogistic? Robin Smith; 4. Necessity, possibility and determinism in Stoic thought Vanessa de Harven; 5. Necessity in Avicenna and the Arabic tradition Paul Thom; 6. Modality without the Prior Analytics: early twelfth-century accounts of modal propositions Chris Martin; 7. Ockham and the foundations of modal theory in the fourteenth century Calvin G. Normore; 8. Theological and scientific applications of the notion of necessity in the mediaeval and early modern periods Jack MacIntosh; 9. Locke and the problem of necessity in early modern philosophy Peter Anstey; 10. Leibniz's theories of necessity Brandon C. Look; 11. Leibniz and the lucky proof Jonathan Westphal; 12. Divine necessity and Kant's modal categories Nicholas Stang; 13. Charles Sanders Peirce on necessity Catherine Legg and Cheryl Misak; 14. The development of C. I. Lewis's philosophy of modal logic Edwin Mares; 15. Carnap's modal predicate logic Max Cresswell.
About the author
Max Cresswell taught philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington from 1963 to 1999, and has taught there again part-time since 2009. He has published over 150 articles and eleven books, including three widely used texts on modal logic with G. E. Hughes, and most recently, with Adriane Rini, The World-Time Parallel (Cambridge, 2012).Edwin Mares is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington. His publications include Relevant Logic: A Philosophical Interpretation (Cambridge, 2004), A Priori (2011), and, with Stuart Brock, Realism and Anti-Realism (2007).Adriane Rini is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Massey University, New Zealand. She is the author of Aristotle's Modal Proofs (2011) and, with Max Cresswell, The World-Time Parallel (Cambridge, 2012).
Summary
The essays in this volume examine the theories about the logical modalities (necessity and possibility) held by leading philosophers from Aristotle in ancient Greece to Rudolf Carnap in the twentieth century. The volume is intended for those with an interest in the logic and philosophy of modality.
