Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

Some philosophers believe that powers are more acceptable, naturalistic, non-ad hoc and actualist-friendly candidates to replace possible worlds (PWs) in a dispositionalist analysis of modality. However, such a swift opposition between powers and PWs is both unwarranted and problematic. Furthermore, there is at least one power-based ontology of PWs, which in turn offers a power-based applied PW-semantics for dispositionalists. On this account, first briefly suggested in Vetter 2015, a PW is taken to be a dispositional array, viz., a power for the entire universe to be so-and-so. I discuss several…

In her book Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality (2015), Barbara Vetter introduces a new ontological and semantical framework for modal discourse, based on potentiality. Within this framework, Vetter attempts to formulate an embryonic semantical account for counterfactual conditionals. The aim of this paper is to discuss this tentative account of counterfactuals. Being an account at such an early stage, there are many elements and issues that could be discussed, but this work will focus only on one aspect of it. The aspect in question is the treatment of would-counterfactuals, which…

This paper calls into question the traditional interpretation that logic is, according to Kant, analytic. On the basis of a reconstruction of the salient features of both Kant’s theory of analyticity and conception of pure general logic, it is shown that Kant does not apply the analytic-synthetic distinction to logical judgments at all. Moreover, applying Kant’s definitions beyond his reasons for leaving the matter unsolved leads to the result that many logical judgments are neither analytic nor synthetic.

This paper discusses a new paradox, the paradox of infallibility. Let us define infallibility in the following way: (Def I) t is infallible if and only if (iff) everything t believes is true, where t is any term. (Def I) entails the following proposition: (I) It is necessary that for every individual x, x is infallible iff every proposition x believes is true. However, (I) seems to be inconsistent with the following proposition (P): It is possible that there is some individual who believes exactly one proposition, namely that she…

Jack Spencer has recently argued that somebody might be able to do the impossible.  In response, Anthony Nguyen has argued against Spencer’s arguments. In this paper, I do not argue against Spencer’s arguments. Instead, I argue directly against Spencer’s thesis. In the first part of my paper, I develop an argument that suggests that it is implausible that somebody is able to do the impossible (because somebody who is able to do the impossible would be able to do something that would have incredible consequences). In the second part of…

In this paper, we apply a Herzberger-style semantics to deal with the question: is the de Finetti conditional a conditional? The question is pressing, in view of the inferential behavior of the de Finetti conditional: it allows for inferences that seem quite unexpected for a conditional. The semantics we advance here for the de Finetti conditional is simply the classical semantics for material conditional, with a further dimension whose understanding depends on the kind of application one has in mind. We discuss such possible applications and how they cover ground…