How Broad Modal Fictionalism Can Survive Rosen’s Challenge
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Gideon Rosen described the difficulties faced by those who claim that statements about possible worlds cannot be literally true. According to his argument, if the truth of modal sentences could be explained by referring to the hypothesis of the plurality of possible worlds, which is a sort of fiction for modal irrealists, the position would have antinomic consequence. I argue that the advocate of broad modal fictionalism can avoid such a devastating conclusion. To that end, her position should be given in meta-language describing the necessary and sufficient conditions of accepting modal sentences as true in terms of fiction of possible worlds. I show that there is a coherent way of reading ‘it is accepted as true’ that allows one to maintain that the disjunction of two mutually contradictory propositions can be accepted without accepting either of them.
Source: Analiza i Egzystencja
Author: Tomasz Puczyłowski
Institution: University of Warsaw
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4396770076