28 October 2014, Logic Tea, Janine Reinert

Abstract

Hybrid approaches in modal metaphysics amend Lewisian modal realism about possibilty (1973, 1986), i.e. the analysis of possibility by means of concrete worlds, with abstract, representational `worlds' to account for impossibility as well. I will suggest two criteria to evaluate the success of such proposals, which I will call `Faithfulness' and `Plenitude' and apply them to the hybrid proposals of Restall (1997), Berto (2010) and Mares (1997). It will turn out that only Mares's hybrid comes close to offering a satisfactory answer to the challenges of faithfulness and plenitude. However, since his hybrid is couched in a propositional language, I will attempt a generalization to first order logic, and discuss in how far this more expressive variant faces challenges of its own.

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