The principle of explosion: ua-cam.com/video/OkxmvkGnfgQ/v-deo.html The Liar paradox: ua-cam.com/video/F2uERWvA5e0/v-deo.html Conceivability and possibility: ua-cam.com/video/BYsT1Bk1_8Q/v-deo.html Modal antirealism: ua-cam.com/video/F-eSa9KROgo/v-deo.html Counterpossibles: ua-cam.com/video/aoLuiMEa8Ts/v-deo.html The principle of sufficient reason: ua-cam.com/video/FWxYJgI_ZgY/v-deo.html Quine's critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction: ua-cam.com/video/MB1MHWw_E5M/v-deo.html
Why talking about disagreeing.. he's mainly showing the main views and tries to use tools to defend a position, which might or migth no be his (at least in this video)
@@al-kimiya6962 Yeah I know, but in that video he didn't seem to share it/push it IMO (ie descriptive not prescriptive/opiniated), but yes I'm aware of his asserted anti-realism etc.
@@colorblindzebra I could sense the undertones pertaining to his philosophical commitments in this video itself but alas! i didn't mean to critique this video with that comment, it was a general compliment.
In terms of quantum mechanics LNC is just another way of saying that we may observe only one possibility of measurement at a time and not the other. Great lecture, thx
I would just accept necessitarianism over possiblism (thereby dialetheism), but I think both the positions are equally plausible, where as anti possiblism or limited possiblism seems arbitrary to me because supposing the there is a necessary foundation that grounds all other facts either this grounding relation between P the necessary fact and Q is such that whenever P fully grounds Q P necessitates Q, if that principle holds Necessitarianism would follow if not then we have room for arguing in favour of possiblism but what the anti possiblist seems to do is accept the principle “if P fully grounds Q P necessitates Q” only with respect to some facts and not all which is arbitrary as I am not sure how one can justify accepting such a thing for some facts say laws of logic and not other contingent facts. It just seems way more easier to reject the ‘full grounds necessitate their grounds’ rule entirely
I'm not sure there is any meaning to the claim given what we ordinarily mean by "all over". Just in case we can say that a color is not simultaneously two colors (though, it may be reducible to a mixture of more basic colors), then for X to be 'red all over' means there is no part of X's surface that isn't red (at some moment in time). The only way around this might be to say that X is constituted by more than one surface (not in the phenomenal sense) such that some more superficial surface is perhaps red or green all over while a deeper surface is the opposite color all over. So, it might be that, in order to convey our meaning to someone with the interest to be precise about all of a thing's surfaces, we must increase the specification re: what is red or green all over, i.e. X is superficially red all over (and therefore not superficially green all over). I think medieval philosophers liked to do this by referring to the properties of things 'in aspect'. So, you would refine the necessary claim to be: nothing can be simultaneously red and green all over in the same respect.
@@anthonyspencer766 I agree that for X to be red all over means that there is no part of X's surface that isn't red. I'm pretty confident that I can visualise a surface such that every part of the surface is red, and every part of the surface is also green. Basically, I'm visualizing a red surface, then just mentally pasting green over the red, but without removing any of the red. If you can't do this easily, here's a trick that might help. Start by looking at a red object. So you'll have a red surface on your visual field. Then mentally visualise something green in the same place. You can kind of "force" mental imagery into the visual field. Perhaps an even simpler way to practice this would be to take a black line drawing on white paper and mentally fill in the colours. You'll be seeing white, while mentally visualizing e.g. blue in the same place -- if you attend to that, you might get the sense of what it would be like for something to be white and blue all over simultaneously. Now granted, this isn't going to get you all the way, because there's a distinction between seeing and mentally visualizing. You are neither seeing white and blue all over, nor mentally visualizing white and blue all over; rather, you are seeing white and visualizing blue. But I suspect that attending closely to this experience might help you genuinely visualise double coloured surfaces.
@@KaneB I'm wondering if after this 'paste' operation it makes any sense to say the surface is still red all over. In what way? Does it have the appearance of being red and green simultaneously? If not, then perhaps it is a shade of brown. But this raises the question: if green is composed of a mixture of blue and yellow, then have you actually just pasted yellow over blue over red? When one visualizes the color green by itself, we do not perform any blue + yellow pasting. Nor would it be a simple matter of mentally 'separating' green into its constituent colors in a way that eradicates the green like it might if we could analogously separate the pigments in green paint back into yellow and blue. What you have described seems like substituting one color for another. Your description of the exercise wherein we look at a black-and-white line drawing and imagine filling in a white section with the color blue is insightful. In that case, I think we're dealing with two different faculties. One continues to see white in spite of imagining the same section being blue. Here, we're just doing two things at once. One does not require visualizing the white color. It's caused by the actual color of that section of the drawing and normally functioning sight. Imagining it is blue does not interfere with the actual white one is perceiving. In the case where you ask me to imagine a square that is white all over at the same time as it is blue all over, I think you're imagining either one or the other (or some mixture of white and blue as in mosaic tiles or splotches). I would agree that there is some sense in which we can conceive of the simultaneity of X being two colors, but I take it that this has more to do with conceptual contents than visualization. We can understand how the color green is simultaneously blue and yellow, but this is a reductive explanation, not a visualization of green. The actual color green is neither blue nor yellow, and it no longer contains those colors after green has been created. This is difficult.
This reminds me of a phenomenon in computer graphics referred to as Z-fighting or Z-clipping. If you've ever played a game and notice that a surface's texture seems to change wildly as you move around/move the camera around it, that's it. It's caused by having two objects occupy the same coordinates in space such that whenever you are perceiving for example pixels on a wall, and if we said one wall was red and the other was green, the wall could appear as an insane spread/combo/split between the colors. That's about the closest I can get to imagining a surface that is all red and all green at the same time.
Is it possible for possiblism to be not true under possiblism? If yes then there could be some nessesity. If no then there must be some sort of nessesity preventing nessesity which is a contradiction. Even if contradictions were possible in this domain, it would entail. Both its possibility and its impossibility.
Yes, possibilists will hold that it is possible that possibilism is false. In fact, possibilists will hold that, for any proposition whatsoever, it is possible that this proposition is necessarily true. Not only is it possible that there are square circles, it is possible that it is necessary that there are square circles. So it's not just that there could be some necessity, there could be any necessity.
@@KaneBbut isn’t that just equivalent to saying it’s necessary on alethic modality? Maybe we could say there is no alethic modality, but in that case we’ve kinda lost the ability to make possibilism a comprehensible position.
@@blankname1209 This would only be the case if we're assuming that absolute modality obeys the principles of a modal logic such as S5. In S5, any string of modal operators can be replaced with the last operator in the string. So if P is possibly necessary, we can infer that P is necessary. The possibilist will reject that this is the correct logic for this domain. Perhaps she will say that there is no correct logic for this domain; at the very least, possibilists will reject much of the standard formal machinery for modality. For instance, the identification of possibility with truth in some possible world is problematic given possibilism. (Consider: the possibilist will hold that it is possible that there are no possible worlds, but at no world is it true that there are no possible worlds.)
@@KaneB I agree it requires a specific model of modal logic, but I’m fairly certain that S5 is what philosophers use for alethic modality. I agree that the possibilist can simply say that alethic modality isn’t necessarily true of the world, but at that point it just seems like I’d want to take a modal anti-realist position.
@@blankname1209 The current consensus is that the logic of alethic modality is S5, but as with everything else that is the consensus in philosophy, this is not totally beyond dispute. Nathan Salmon and Michael Dummett have both given arguments against S5 in this context. Given that possibilism is a fringe position, it's not surprising that possibilists also reject the consensus about S5.
I'm not tracking with the "if linguistic convention, then no metaphysical significance" inference. I don't plan to try to make one now, but intuitively, it seems like we could defend the match between language and world in a number of different ways. I am pretty loathe to take the route that many did in the last century and give a certain swampy priority to language. (Thanks for the video, Kane. Another good one.)
Ontological Possibllism tends to be anchored in Real numbers because being the ones with as many decimal places as you like, aren’t quantum, therefore forming a continuum and endless possibilities. However integers are quantum. There can’t be an integer between 1 and 2.
@@JohnDoe-jw7cj by potential I mean a lack of form which in turn contains it. In other words you shape it by imagining it but it only has a shape because you’re there.
@@radicalfishstickstm8563 If you imagine it, it is not non-being . If it is contained, it is not non-being. Whatever you say non-being to be, it is not. Because by definition non-being is not.
@@JohnDoe-jw7cj I didn’t say it’s contained or even imagined. My point is that each possibility is an observer’s local delineation of potential. A square contains two isosceles triangles and four smaller squares, but they aren’t the square. Anyway, we can allude to potential but that’s by negation of existence. So wouldn’t that be non-being?
What if in a different world, it was normal to perceive two copies of your visual field (say one from each eye), and some object had some set of physical properties such that it appeared green all over to everyone's left eye and red all over to everyone's right eye. The natural laws needed to make that work might be very strange but it's possible?
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master - that’s all.” ― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
If we can reliably predict how often a given system will function in a particular way, we can calculate a probability. Some things require a more specific analysis but interest (scrutiny) decreases with higher probabilities.
If circle is a set of points equidistant from a reference point, and being square means being made out of four line segments of equal length, then the circle in the taxicab geometry is square. Afaik it's not possible to measure angles in taxicab.
I don't think the universe could be other than way it is, regardless of perspectives, in the same way god, after creation of the world, cannot then change these same laws without contradiction to his essential perfection.
I have an unpopular dream, would be very difficult to succeed in. It's technically possible given the current legal situation in many countries and states for me to succeed. It's possible.
So, is it _possible_ for metaphysically necessary propositions to exist? Is the proposition "No proposition is metphysically necessary" itself metaphysically necessary, or it it contingent?
It is contingent. A truth holding universally is not the same as it holding necessarily. If every humans favorite color was red that would make red universally preffered but it wouldn't make red NECESSARILY preffered. There are possible worlds were everyones favorite color is something else.
@@juliohernandez3509 I see. So you say that there are possible worlds where some meyaphysically necessary truths do exist, but ours is not one of them?
@@juliohernandez3509 I think you are forgetting what the term "metaphysically necessary" means. So here's a reminder: metaphysically necessary propositions are, by definition, true in _all_ possible worlds. If they only exist in some possible worlds and not others, it means they are not metaphysically necessary. Or to make things even clearer, my original comment wasn't asking a question; it was constructing a paradox.
@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 I am not forgetting what the term means at all. I am merely elaborating what possibilism is defending. Possibilism is the position that all statements are possible. According to that view some worlds have necessary truths. Some worlds don't. There is no paradox. The paradox presumes that it is true in all possible worlds that there are no necessary truths. That is not what possibilism is asserting. Possibilsm asserts that in some worlds necessary truths are possible.
2:00 I wouldn't say that stuff like the theory of relativity is a blow *against* metaphysical necessity/metaphysical possibility. For me it's more like... evidence in the direction that we are godawful at making metaphysical claims, even if metaphysical necessity is a real and bottlenecky thing in principle. (caveat: I do concede there are compelling reasons to believe that metaphysical necessity is shaky as a concept, I just don't think *that* is one of them)
Yeah, it seems like if we had been lucky enough to invent the true theory first time, we would have no evidence against metaphysical necessity; indeed, if anything, we might be more inclined to buy into metaphysical necessity. Perhaps there's a slightly different way to put the argument, though. The point might instead be something like this: (1) if there are any metaphysical necessities, they should concern the fundamental structure of the world; and (2) regardless of which theory we take to be true, we have a variety of different theories on the table which give us very different pictures of the fundamental structure of the world, where we judge that any of these theories could have been true. Perhaps we can never rule out metaphysical necessity across the board in this way, but we might be able to significantly restrict its scope.
Possibilism (in the sense you are using it here) not only conflicts with S5 modal logic, it conflicts with all versions of C I Lewis' modal logics. You cannot have (diamond)P as an axiom without contradiction, because all modal logics have at least one theorem of the form (box)Q. So, to avoid explosion, you would need to change the underlying logic. After all, if anything is possible, contradictions are possible. It might have been helpful for you to distinguish this notion of possibilism from the one that figures in the possibilism vs. actualism debate about whether there are things that don't exist but might have existed. That kind of possibilism is not only consistent with S5 but appears to be entailed by SQML.
Yeah. For any logical principle whatsoever, there will be a possible case in which that principle fails. So the possibilist presumably has to say that there is no logic of absolute modality.
I start with a red square. Then I just paste green over it. So there's a square that's both red and green all over. I'm not sure how to describe this in any more detail.
@@KaneB I find this totally incomprehensible. When I try, I just kinda imagine a red and green color blended together. Not that I doubt what you're saying. Maybe I am imaginatively impoverished.
@@aaronchipp-miller9608 My mental imagery is fairly poor actually. I can only clearly visualize simple colours and shapes. I can't get a detailed picture of a room or a landscape, say. But I don't have any trouble pasting one colour over another. (Three colours is more difficult, and I can't confidently say that I've ever done that, though there have been moments where I feel like I've got it.)
Surely if anything was possible then it would be possible for a mere possibility of some random p to make everything impossible (ridiculuos, but "anything" means anything) . In that case something would be impossible, namely everything.
@@женяродшен I imagine the possibilist would say that yes, this is possible. That is, it is possible that the mere possibility of p makes everything impossible. But it is not actually the case that the mere possibility of p makes everything impossible. There is no risk of everything becoming impossible so long as it remains only a possibility that the mere possibility of p makes everything impossible.
If 1) it's possible that the mere possibility of p makes everything impossible and 2) everything is possible then 3) the p which makes everything impossible just by being possible is actually possible and therefore 4) everything is impossible
@@женяродшенGenerally 4) wouldn't follow from the first 3, since you still don't know whether possible P actually makes everything impossible, at most you could infer it's possible everything is impossible
@@женяродшен The first premise there would need to be -- (1.) It's actually true that the mere possibility of p makes everything impossible. We don't, in fact, live in a world where mere possibility makes everything impossible. So I'm not seeing where the threat is here.
@@KaneB If everything is possible, then the possibility making everything impossible should be possible too, otherwise one p would be impossible and possibilism would be false. But there is no difference between a possible possibility and a possibility tout court. So the possibility of this possibility implies that it's an actual possibility which makes everything impossible qua such a possibility. If it is possible that p is possible, then p is just plain possible. Here one can't make a distinction between a mere possibility and an actuality, because a possibility of a possibility is it's actuality.
:Is it necessary under possiblism that there are no necessary facts? :Is it possible under possiblism that there are necessary facts? :Is it necessary under possiblism that there are possible facts? :Is it possible under possibilism that there are no possible facts? TLDR: possiblism is possibilly bullshit in some possible world therefore it's actually bullshit in all possible worlds.
The answers are: No, yes, no, yes. I'm not sure how you get that TL;DR from those answers, though. Possibilism, as the possibilist sees it, is possibly false. It is possible that there are necessary truths. It doesn't follow - at least not obviously - that it is actually the case that there are necessary truths. The problem here might be that you are identifying possibility with possible worlds in the standard sense that philosophers use that phrase, where for P to be necessary is for P to hold in all possible worlds. On that analysis, if there is any possible world where P is necessary, then it will be that P holds in all possible worlds (or at least all worlds accessible from that world). But obviously, the possibilist will reject this kind of possible worlds semantics.
@@KaneB I still don't understand how can you maintain "everything is possible/nothing is impossible" in conjunction with "it is possible not everything is possible/something is impossible" without being incoherently unintelligible.
@@al-kimiya6962 Okay. I'm not sure how to respond to that, unless you want to give more detail about what you take the problem to be. It seems to me that, if you assert that everything is possible, then it is to be expected that you would also assert that it is possible that not everything is possible. What would be strange to me would be asserting that everything is possible, and then asserting that it is impossible that not everything is possible. To say that it is impossible that X is usually taken to imply that it is not the case that X. In which case, you would be asserting that everything is possible, and then committing yourself to the view that it is not the case that some state of affairs is possible, which would be an outright contradiction. Maybe dialetheists would be comfortable with this.
@@KaneB I mean on one hand you're making a positive claim that "everything is possible" and then on the other you're expressing uncertainty that "possibly(maybe) not everything is possible" How can one be certain and uncertain about the same proposition simultaneously? It seems unintelligible to me.
Very good video but you have nothing in your entire channel regarding the metaphysics of time. I really love that subject and it would be nice to bring it for the first time.
The principle of explosion: ua-cam.com/video/OkxmvkGnfgQ/v-deo.html
The Liar paradox: ua-cam.com/video/F2uERWvA5e0/v-deo.html
Conceivability and possibility: ua-cam.com/video/BYsT1Bk1_8Q/v-deo.html
Modal antirealism: ua-cam.com/video/F-eSa9KROgo/v-deo.html
Counterpossibles: ua-cam.com/video/aoLuiMEa8Ts/v-deo.html
The principle of sufficient reason: ua-cam.com/video/FWxYJgI_ZgY/v-deo.html
Quine's critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction: ua-cam.com/video/MB1MHWw_E5M/v-deo.html
Thanks!
Thanks so much for the support! I really appreciate it.
Danke!
Kevin Garnett is the most famous advocate for possibilism
The basketball player?
@@woodwoodchuck546 look up "kevin garnett anything is possible" if you don't believe me. he takes a very clear stance on possibilism
Df
Lol. I have to admit, as a C's fan since the 1970s, KGs meltdown after the game 6 clinching win vs the Lakers, was cringe lol.
LMFAOOOO
Kane B. (Can Be) speaks on possibilism 💀
Could he have been Could B.?
You're one of my favourite philosophy channels even though I barely agree with your opinions.
Gotta say the same. I disagree on basically everything, yet somehow find it the most intellectually stimulating philosophy channel on YT. Weird.
Why talking about disagreeing.. he's mainly showing the main views and tries to use tools to defend a position, which might or migth no be his (at least in this video)
@@colorblindzebra he also has his own views.
@@al-kimiya6962 Yeah I know, but in that video he didn't seem to share it/push it IMO (ie descriptive not prescriptive/opiniated), but yes I'm aware of his asserted anti-realism etc.
@@colorblindzebra I could sense the undertones pertaining to his philosophical commitments in this video itself but alas! i didn't mean to critique this video with that comment, it was a general compliment.
In terms of quantum mechanics LNC is just another way of saying that we may observe only one possibility of measurement at a time and not the other. Great lecture, thx
"Does metaphysical necessity merely record a decision to use words a particular way?"
Yes, of course?
"More of me - for a fee." is a great slogan. 😀
I would just accept necessitarianism over possiblism (thereby dialetheism), but I think both the positions are equally plausible, where as anti possiblism or limited possiblism seems arbitrary to me because supposing the there is a necessary foundation that grounds all other facts either this grounding relation between P the necessary fact and Q is such that whenever P fully grounds Q P necessitates Q, if that principle holds Necessitarianism would follow if not then we have room for arguing in favour of possiblism but what the anti possiblist seems to do is accept the principle “if P fully grounds Q P necessitates Q” only with respect to some facts and not all which is arbitrary as I am not sure how one can justify accepting such a thing for some facts say laws of logic and not other contingent facts. It just seems way more easier to reject the ‘full grounds necessitate their grounds’ rule entirely
I think I was a possibilist, but didn't have the words.
You can visualize in your mind's eye an object that is both red and green all over? I wonder how common that is.
I'm not sure there is any meaning to the claim given what we ordinarily mean by "all over". Just in case we can say that a color is not simultaneously two colors (though, it may be reducible to a mixture of more basic colors), then for X to be 'red all over' means there is no part of X's surface that isn't red (at some moment in time).
The only way around this might be to say that X is constituted by more than one surface (not in the phenomenal sense) such that some more superficial surface is perhaps red or green all over while a deeper surface is the opposite color all over.
So, it might be that, in order to convey our meaning to someone with the interest to be precise about all of a thing's surfaces, we must increase the specification re: what is red or green all over, i.e. X is superficially red all over (and therefore not superficially green all over). I think medieval philosophers liked to do this by referring to the properties of things 'in aspect'. So, you would refine the necessary claim to be: nothing can be simultaneously red and green all over in the same respect.
@@anthonyspencer766 I agree that for X to be red all over means that there is no part of X's surface that isn't red. I'm pretty confident that I can visualise a surface such that every part of the surface is red, and every part of the surface is also green. Basically, I'm visualizing a red surface, then just mentally pasting green over the red, but without removing any of the red.
If you can't do this easily, here's a trick that might help. Start by looking at a red object. So you'll have a red surface on your visual field. Then mentally visualise something green in the same place. You can kind of "force" mental imagery into the visual field. Perhaps an even simpler way to practice this would be to take a black line drawing on white paper and mentally fill in the colours. You'll be seeing white, while mentally visualizing e.g. blue in the same place -- if you attend to that, you might get the sense of what it would be like for something to be white and blue all over simultaneously.
Now granted, this isn't going to get you all the way, because there's a distinction between seeing and mentally visualizing. You are neither seeing white and blue all over, nor mentally visualizing white and blue all over; rather, you are seeing white and visualizing blue. But I suspect that attending closely to this experience might help you genuinely visualise double coloured surfaces.
@@KaneB I'm wondering if after this 'paste' operation it makes any sense to say the surface is still red all over. In what way? Does it have the appearance of being red and green simultaneously? If not, then perhaps it is a shade of brown. But this raises the question: if green is composed of a mixture of blue and yellow, then have you actually just pasted yellow over blue over red? When one visualizes the color green by itself, we do not perform any blue + yellow pasting. Nor would it be a simple matter of mentally 'separating' green into its constituent colors in a way that eradicates the green like it might if we could analogously separate the pigments in green paint back into yellow and blue.
What you have described seems like substituting one color for another. Your description of the exercise wherein we look at a black-and-white line drawing and imagine filling in a white section with the color blue is insightful. In that case, I think we're dealing with two different faculties. One continues to see white in spite of imagining the same section being blue. Here, we're just doing two things at once. One does not require visualizing the white color. It's caused by the actual color of that section of the drawing and normally functioning sight. Imagining it is blue does not interfere with the actual white one is perceiving. In the case where you ask me to imagine a square that is white all over at the same time as it is blue all over, I think you're imagining either one or the other (or some mixture of white and blue as in mosaic tiles or splotches).
I would agree that there is some sense in which we can conceive of the simultaneity of X being two colors, but I take it that this has more to do with conceptual contents than visualization. We can understand how the color green is simultaneously blue and yellow, but this is a reductive explanation, not a visualization of green. The actual color green is neither blue nor yellow, and it no longer contains those colors after green has been created.
This is difficult.
This reminds me of a phenomenon in computer graphics referred to as Z-fighting or Z-clipping. If you've ever played a game and notice that a surface's texture seems to change wildly as you move around/move the camera around it, that's it. It's caused by having two objects occupy the same coordinates in space such that whenever you are perceiving for example pixels on a wall, and if we said one wall was red and the other was green, the wall could appear as an insane spread/combo/split between the colors. That's about the closest I can get to imagining a surface that is all red and all green at the same time.
Is it possible for possiblism to be not true under possiblism? If yes then there could be some nessesity. If no then there must be some sort of nessesity preventing nessesity which is a contradiction. Even if contradictions were possible in this domain, it would entail. Both its possibility and its impossibility.
Yes, possibilists will hold that it is possible that possibilism is false. In fact, possibilists will hold that, for any proposition whatsoever, it is possible that this proposition is necessarily true. Not only is it possible that there are square circles, it is possible that it is necessary that there are square circles. So it's not just that there could be some necessity, there could be any necessity.
@@KaneBbut isn’t that just equivalent to saying it’s necessary on alethic modality? Maybe we could say there is no alethic modality, but in that case we’ve kinda lost the ability to make possibilism a comprehensible position.
@@blankname1209 This would only be the case if we're assuming that absolute modality obeys the principles of a modal logic such as S5. In S5, any string of modal operators can be replaced with the last operator in the string. So if P is possibly necessary, we can infer that P is necessary. The possibilist will reject that this is the correct logic for this domain. Perhaps she will say that there is no correct logic for this domain; at the very least, possibilists will reject much of the standard formal machinery for modality. For instance, the identification of possibility with truth in some possible world is problematic given possibilism. (Consider: the possibilist will hold that it is possible that there are no possible worlds, but at no world is it true that there are no possible worlds.)
@@KaneB I agree it requires a specific model of modal logic, but I’m fairly certain that S5 is what philosophers use for alethic modality. I agree that the possibilist can simply say that alethic modality isn’t necessarily true of the world, but at that point it just seems like I’d want to take a modal anti-realist position.
@@blankname1209 The current consensus is that the logic of alethic modality is S5, but as with everything else that is the consensus in philosophy, this is not totally beyond dispute. Nathan Salmon and Michael Dummett have both given arguments against S5 in this context. Given that possibilism is a fringe position, it's not surprising that possibilists also reject the consensus about S5.
Amazing content thank you so much!
Any argument for existence is ultimately circular. But this also maintains its locality, which prevents universal truths
Good show! 😊👍
I'm not tracking with the "if linguistic convention, then no metaphysical significance" inference. I don't plan to try to make one now, but intuitively, it seems like we could defend the match between language and world in a number of different ways. I am pretty loathe to take the route that many did in the last century and give a certain swampy priority to language. (Thanks for the video, Kane. Another good one.)
So I haven't been fighting reason with reason. I've been fighting possibility with probability.
Great video as always Dr. B
really informative video, thank you for this
Ontological Possibllism tends to be anchored in Real numbers because being the ones with as many decimal places as you like, aren’t quantum, therefore forming a continuum and endless possibilities.
However integers are quantum. There can’t be an integer between 1 and 2.
Everything is necessary
Parmenides declared non-being impossible. Everything after that is a bit more of a tricky widget.
I mean, non-being is just potential.
@@radicalfishstickstm8563 if it is something - potential - then it is not nothing/non-being.
@@JohnDoe-jw7cj by potential I mean a lack of form which in turn contains it. In other words you shape it by imagining it but it only has a shape because you’re there.
@@radicalfishstickstm8563 If you imagine it, it is not non-being .
If it is contained, it is not non-being.
Whatever you say non-being to be, it is not. Because by definition non-being is not.
@@JohnDoe-jw7cj I didn’t say it’s contained or even imagined. My point is that each possibility is an observer’s local delineation of potential. A square contains two isosceles triangles and four smaller squares, but they aren’t the square. Anyway, we can allude to potential but that’s by negation of existence. So wouldn’t that be non-being?
14:00 Actually, that's already the case in Special Relativity
What if in a different world, it was normal to perceive two copies of your visual field (say one from each eye), and some object had some set of physical properties such that it appeared green all over to everyone's left eye and red all over to everyone's right eye. The natural laws needed to make that work might be very strange but it's possible?
Ate that up left no crumbsssss
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master - that’s all.”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
If we can reliably predict how often a given system will function in a particular way, we can calculate a probability. Some things require a more specific analysis but interest (scrutiny) decreases with higher probabilities.
The more frequently you observe something the less you scrutinize it.
If circle is a set of points equidistant from a reference point, and being square means being made out of four line segments of equal length, then the circle in the taxicab geometry is square. Afaik it's not possible to measure angles in taxicab.
Oh, you mention it later in the video, sorry!
Mahal ngab bakers
I don't think the universe could be other than way it is, regardless of perspectives, in the same way god, after creation of the world, cannot then change these same laws without contradiction to his essential perfection.
I have an unpopular dream, would be very difficult to succeed in. It's technically possible given the current legal situation in many countries and states for me to succeed. It's possible.
That would be an adult video star?
So, is it _possible_ for metaphysically necessary propositions to exist?
Is the proposition "No proposition is metphysically necessary" itself metaphysically necessary, or it it contingent?
It is contingent. A truth holding universally is not the same as it holding necessarily. If every humans favorite color was red that would make red universally preffered but it wouldn't make red NECESSARILY preffered. There are possible worlds were everyones favorite color is something else.
@@juliohernandez3509 I see. So you say that there are possible worlds where some meyaphysically necessary truths do exist, but ours is not one of them?
@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 correct. It is possible the necessary truths exist but in the actual world all truths are merely possible not necessary.
@@juliohernandez3509 I think you are forgetting what the term "metaphysically necessary" means.
So here's a reminder: metaphysically necessary propositions are, by definition, true in _all_ possible worlds. If they only exist in some possible worlds and not others, it means they are not metaphysically necessary.
Or to make things even clearer, my original comment wasn't asking a question; it was constructing a paradox.
@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 I am not forgetting what the term means at all. I am merely elaborating what possibilism is defending. Possibilism is the position that all statements are possible. According to that view some worlds have necessary truths. Some worlds don't. There is no paradox.
The paradox presumes that it is true in all possible worlds that there are no necessary truths. That is not what possibilism is asserting. Possibilsm asserts that in some worlds necessary truths are possible.
2:00 I wouldn't say that stuff like the theory of relativity is a blow *against* metaphysical necessity/metaphysical possibility. For me it's more like... evidence in the direction that we are godawful at making metaphysical claims, even if metaphysical necessity is a real and bottlenecky thing in principle.
(caveat: I do concede there are compelling reasons to believe that metaphysical necessity is shaky as a concept, I just don't think *that* is one of them)
Yeah, it seems like if we had been lucky enough to invent the true theory first time, we would have no evidence against metaphysical necessity; indeed, if anything, we might be more inclined to buy into metaphysical necessity. Perhaps there's a slightly different way to put the argument, though. The point might instead be something like this: (1) if there are any metaphysical necessities, they should concern the fundamental structure of the world; and (2) regardless of which theory we take to be true, we have a variety of different theories on the table which give us very different pictures of the fundamental structure of the world, where we judge that any of these theories could have been true. Perhaps we can never rule out metaphysical necessity across the board in this way, but we might be able to significantly restrict its scope.
One should repost K videos with fixed colors. AKA color inversion.
Possibilism (in the sense you are using it here) not only conflicts with S5 modal logic, it conflicts with all versions of C I Lewis' modal logics. You cannot have (diamond)P as an axiom without contradiction, because all modal logics have at least one theorem of the form (box)Q. So, to avoid explosion, you would need to change the underlying logic. After all, if anything is possible, contradictions are possible. It might have been helpful for you to distinguish this notion of possibilism from the one that figures in the possibilism vs. actualism debate about whether there are things that don't exist but might have existed. That kind of possibilism is not only consistent with S5 but appears to be entailed by SQML.
Yeah. For any logical principle whatsoever, there will be a possible case in which that principle fails. So the possibilist presumably has to say that there is no logic of absolute modality.
When you imagine a cube that is both red and green, what does it look like on a particular moment?
I start with a red square. Then I just paste green over it. So there's a square that's both red and green all over. I'm not sure how to describe this in any more detail.
@@KaneB I find this totally incomprehensible. When I try, I just kinda imagine a red and green color blended together. Not that I doubt what you're saying. Maybe I am imaginatively impoverished.
@@aaronchipp-miller9608 My mental imagery is fairly poor actually. I can only clearly visualize simple colours and shapes. I can't get a detailed picture of a room or a landscape, say. But I don't have any trouble pasting one colour over another. (Three colours is more difficult, and I can't confidently say that I've ever done that, though there have been moments where I feel like I've got it.)
Surely if anything was possible then it would be possible for a mere possibility of some random p to make everything impossible (ridiculuos, but "anything" means anything) . In that case something would be impossible, namely everything.
@@женяродшен I imagine the possibilist would say that yes, this is possible. That is, it is possible that the mere possibility of p makes everything impossible. But it is not actually the case that the mere possibility of p makes everything impossible. There is no risk of everything becoming impossible so long as it remains only a possibility that the mere possibility of p makes everything impossible.
If 1) it's possible that the mere possibility of p makes everything impossible and 2) everything is possible then 3) the p which makes everything impossible just by being possible is actually possible and therefore 4) everything is impossible
@@женяродшенGenerally 4) wouldn't follow from the first 3, since you still don't know whether possible P actually makes everything impossible, at most you could infer it's possible everything is impossible
@@женяродшен The first premise there would need to be --
(1.) It's actually true that the mere possibility of p makes everything impossible.
We don't, in fact, live in a world where mere possibility makes everything impossible. So I'm not seeing where the threat is here.
@@KaneB If everything is possible, then the possibility making everything impossible should be possible too, otherwise one p would be impossible and possibilism would be false. But there is no difference between a possible possibility and a possibility tout court. So the possibility of this possibility implies that it's an actual possibility which makes everything impossible qua such a possibility. If it is possible that p is possible, then p is just plain possible. Here one can't make a distinction between a mere possibility and an actuality, because a possibility of a possibility is it's actuality.
Cool 😎
:Is it necessary under possiblism that there are no necessary facts?
:Is it possible under possiblism that there are necessary facts?
:Is it necessary under possiblism that there are possible facts?
:Is it possible under possibilism that there are no possible facts?
TLDR: possiblism is possibilly bullshit in some possible world therefore it's actually bullshit in all possible worlds.
The answers are: No, yes, no, yes. I'm not sure how you get that TL;DR from those answers, though. Possibilism, as the possibilist sees it, is possibly false. It is possible that there are necessary truths. It doesn't follow - at least not obviously - that it is actually the case that there are necessary truths. The problem here might be that you are identifying possibility with possible worlds in the standard sense that philosophers use that phrase, where for P to be necessary is for P to hold in all possible worlds. On that analysis, if there is any possible world where P is necessary, then it will be that P holds in all possible worlds (or at least all worlds accessible from that world). But obviously, the possibilist will reject this kind of possible worlds semantics.
@@KaneB I still don't understand how can you maintain "everything is possible/nothing is impossible" in conjunction with "it is possible not everything is possible/something is impossible" without being incoherently unintelligible.
@@al-kimiya6962 Okay. I'm not sure how to respond to that, unless you want to give more detail about what you take the problem to be. It seems to me that, if you assert that everything is possible, then it is to be expected that you would also assert that it is possible that not everything is possible. What would be strange to me would be asserting that everything is possible, and then asserting that it is impossible that not everything is possible. To say that it is impossible that X is usually taken to imply that it is not the case that X. In which case, you would be asserting that everything is possible, and then committing yourself to the view that it is not the case that some state of affairs is possible, which would be an outright contradiction. Maybe dialetheists would be comfortable with this.
@@KaneB I mean on one hand you're making a positive claim that "everything is possible" and then on the other you're expressing uncertainty that "possibly(maybe) not everything is possible"
How can one be certain and uncertain about the same proposition simultaneously? It seems unintelligible to me.
so this is what modal relativism looks like
👽
2:24 She?
Very good video but you have nothing in your entire channel regarding the metaphysics of time. I really love that subject and it would be nice to bring it for the first time.
Time is a faulty interpretation of entropy and probability.
First, finally 😂
Oi, fifth like
Great thumbnail, didn’t watch the video
Ok you had to address your coughing here, way too disruptive and not a single excuse me or something