Logical Modalities from Aristotle to Carnap

The Story of Necessity

Max Cresswell, Edwin Mares, Adriane Rini

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781107077881
• eBook ISBN: 9781316760819
• Topic: Mathematics
• Subtopic: Logic in Mathematics
• Index: Mathematics

Interest in the metaphysics and logic of possible worlds goes back at least as far as Aristotle, but few books address the history of these important concepts. This volume offers new essays on 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 story begins with an illuminating discussion of Aristotle's views on the connection between logic and metaphysics, continues through the Stoic and mediaeval (including Arabic) traditions, and then moves to the early modern period with particular attention to Locke and Leibniz. The views of Kant, Peirce, C. I. Lewis and Carnap complete the volume. Many of the essays illuminate the connection between the historical figures studied, and recent or current work in the philosophy of modality. The result is a rich and wide-ranging picture of the history of the logical modalities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Table of contents
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Aristotle on the Necessity of the Consequence
• 2 Aristotle on One-Sided Possibility
• 3 Why Does Aristotle Need a Modal Syllogistic?
• 4 Necessity, Possibility, and Determinism in Stoic Thought
• 5 Necessity in Avicenna and the Arabic Tradition
• 6 Modality without the Prior Analytics
• 7 Ockham and the Foundations of Modality in the Fourteenth Century
• 8 Theological and Scientific Applications of the Notion of Necessity in the
• 9 Locke and the Problem of Necessity in Early Modern Philosophy
• 10 Leibniz’s Theories of Necessity
• 11 Leibniz and the Lucky Proof
• 12 Divine Necessity and Kant’s Modal Categories
• 13 Charles Sanders Peirce on Necessity
• 14 The Development of C. I. Lewis’s Philosophy of Modal Logic
• 15 Carnap’s Modal Predicate Logic
• Bibliography
• Index