Quantified modal logic often plays a central role in the debate between those who believe in the existence of possibilia (possibilists) and those who deny their existence (actualists). Traditional logical and semantic theories, when applied to the subject of modality, make the derivation of the Barcan formulas possible. These theorems serve as an affront to common sense intuitions that deny the existence of objects that are merely possible, or that objects have necessary existence. Recent contributions attempt to either render the validity of the Barcan formulas irrelevant to the broader metaphysical issues, or to sate actualist intuitions in a variety of other ways. I argue that these attempts are failures. The possible worlds framework is the proper theoretical apparatus of the possibilist – but not the actualist. The actualist must find some other apparatus to underwrite their intuitions. I argue further that this is not as bad for the actualist as it sounds, since the possible worlds framework cannot itself be used as a motivation to adopt possibilism
This is perhaps a little lazy of me to just post a youtube video - but this is truly worth seeing. My good friend Hamish got me onto these guys and I generally go to their gigs now whenever I get the chance. Everytime I see Jess play I’m absolutely in awe of her violin skills. The crooked fiddle band sure knows how to put the rock into folk rock. Trust me, this vid will blow you away.
Around April of last year Cyclone Wati decided to take an unusual jaunt down the eastern coast of Australia, instead of sticking around the more tropical, northern climes as is typical for Australian cyclones. By the time it got as far south as Sydney, it had been downgraded to a tropical low and was so far out to sea it didn’t even bring with it any rain. However, it produced the most extraordinary surf conditions this country has seen in at least the last 30 years.
In my last post on the topic of names, I examined the referential theory and explained some of the classic difficulties that it has faced. The descriptivist theory of names attempts to avoid these difficulties by denying that the semantic content of a name is the object to which it refers. Instead the theory claims that some kind of description of the object is included in the semantic content of the name. The first person to propose this kind of theory of Frege - and the descriptivist theory was to remain the dominant view up until the second half of the twentieth century. It was displaced as the dominant theory and replaced once again by the referentialist view, thanks largely to the criticisms of Saul Kripke. Given the failure of the descriptivist theory, we are left in a somewhat baffling position, with no theory being entirely satisfactory. We are left in the position where the process of reference, something as familiar to us as eating, remains an unsolved part of larger mystery concerning how we use language.
We are on the cusp of a new era of soulless, vacuous consumerism. A new breed of yuppie idiot - The iPhoney - has hit the streets. They’ve been waiting all their lives for that one piece of electronic gadgetry to fill that vast spiritual void. With the release of the iPhone that day has finally come. Now they can strap that status symbol straight to their chest and wear it with pride. But it even gets better than this: To reward its loyal horde of semi-professional zombies, Apple has shipped a second version of the phone, named after its beloved demographic: The iPhoney!