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![A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality (Bloomsbury Critical Introductions to Contemporary Metaphysics) by [Andrea Borghini]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/511JswexHZL._SY346_.jpg)
A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality (Bloomsbury Critical Introductions to Contemporary Metaphysics) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition
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A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality examines the eight main contemporary theories of possibility behind a central metaphysical topic. Covering modal skepticism, modal expressivism, modalism, modal realism, ersatzism, modal fictionalism, modal agnosticism, and the new modal actualism, this comprehensive introduction to modality places contemporary debates in an historical context.
Beginning with a historical overview, Andrea Borghini discusses Parmenides and Zeno; looks at how central Medieval authors such as Aquinas, and Buridan prepared the ground for the Early Modern radical views of Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hume and discusses advancements in semantics in the later-half of the twentieth century a resulted in the rise of modal metaphysics, the branch characterizing the past few decades of philosophical reflection. Framing the debate according to three main perspectives - logical, epistemic, metaphysical- Borghini provides the basic concepts and terms required to discuss modality.
With suggestions of further reading and end-of-chapter study questions, A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality is an up-to-date resource for students working in contemporary metaphysics seeking a better understanding of this crucial topic.
Beginning with a historical overview, Andrea Borghini discusses Parmenides and Zeno; looks at how central Medieval authors such as Aquinas, and Buridan prepared the ground for the Early Modern radical views of Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hume and discusses advancements in semantics in the later-half of the twentieth century a resulted in the rise of modal metaphysics, the branch characterizing the past few decades of philosophical reflection. Framing the debate according to three main perspectives - logical, epistemic, metaphysical- Borghini provides the basic concepts and terms required to discuss modality.
With suggestions of further reading and end-of-chapter study questions, A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Modality is an up-to-date resource for students working in contemporary metaphysics seeking a better understanding of this crucial topic.
- ISBN-13978-1472524263
- Edition1st
- PublisherBloomsbury Academic
- Publication dateFebruary 25, 2016
- LanguageEnglish
- File size1965 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
The concept of possible world - arguably the single most useful notion of contemporary philosophy - triggers a number of epistemological, semantic, and above all metaphysical questions. This book introduces to, and discusses, all the main contemporary answers to such questions. It provides a clear survey of mainstream and widely discussed views such as ersatzism and Lewisian modal realism. But it also guides us through the most recent approaches, such as modal fictionalism, agnosticism, and new actualism. This makes of it the most up-to-date introduction to the philosophy and metaphysics of modality on the market. Highly recommended. (Franz Berto, Structural Chair of Metaphysics, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands 2015-08-16) --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Book Description
An up-to-date introduction to contemporary metaphysical theories of possibility and necessity, featuring an historical overview of the metaphysics of modality --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
About the Author
Andrea Borghini is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Milan, Italy. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B019JPNL3Y
- Publisher : Bloomsbury Academic; 1st edition (February 25, 2016)
- Publication date : February 25, 2016
- Language : English
- File size : 1965 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
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- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 233 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,584,569 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,198 in Epistemology (Kindle Store)
- #2,650 in Metaphysics (Kindle Store)
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 17, 2017
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Excellent presentation of all the different theories on the subject. No previous knowledge is required. I recommend it to anyone is thinking seriously on the possible and the impossible.
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 23, 2019
This is a very long, slightly repetitive, and mostly negative review. The main idea is that this book doesn’t function very well as an introduction to the topic. If you want an introduction to modality, I recommend Joseph Melia’s “Modality”. I wrote all of this review before I discovered Melia's book though.
Borghini’s book is a useful and laudable contribution to a field that was in need of an introduction, that is nonetheless at times somewhat maddening. As is often the case when someone who is expert in an abstruse field of knowledge is tasked with introducing it to those who are not expert, Borghini adopts a careful hand-holding tone, but frequently turns on a dime and drops abstruse statements in with no notice. This can be somewhat pernicious, as the tone invites the reader to think they should be able to follow the text, and so when they reach something that makes no sense to them (and especially when that thing follows immediately after some extremely simple statements), an untrained reader is likely to blame him or herself, and conclude that they missed something (that wasn’t actually there) in the blocks of text preceding, or that they are just not clever enough to follow even simple explanations.
I won’t assume “layman” is the intended audience here, but probably rather just a college student who had never heard of modality before, and is now in a class discussing it. Although, in the introduction, Borghini quite clearly invites anyone at all to read the book “Why read a book on the metaphysics of possibility? At first one could argue that it is an abstruse topic reserved only for those with a strong philosophical disposition. Practical individuals are immersed in who they are and what they do, what there is and what happens...” Borghini then gives three reasons practical individuals—everyone—should be interested in possibility, concluding that “we are immersed in [possibility], much more than it might appear at first glance.” Nonetheless, series such as this one are quite plainly for the university crowd.
Some points of confusion.
Borghini uses the word “modalities” on the very next page to the above, page 3, in the sentence “Epistemology concerns the modalities through which a subject acquires information about himself”. This is doubly confusing, because most people don’t know what the term “modality” means in itself, and because the book is about modality, yet the use of modality in this instance, the first use of modality in this book, is not in reference to the specific topic of the book, but to the general definition of the term, which again, most people don’t know. So I went to the dictionary. I was interested to discover that it is “a means to attaining an end; a method; a form of sensory perception”. I have been studying the philosophy of modality (the very topic of this book) for three years, and did not know this general definition of the term. Also, upon reading this definition, it was not immediately clear to me that it related to the philosophy of modality; I thought perhaps it was just a coincidence or that there was merely a very distant and not particularly important relationship between the two terms. So here’s the problems: first, anyone who needs a definition of epistemology will need a definition of “modality”, in this general sense. This would be true even if this term didn’t match the topic of the book. It seems that a book that is attempting to hand-hold through a difficult subject would provide a quick gloss on the term, or alternate phrasing. And second, the term “modality” as the topic of the book is not explained until page 10. There he says a “modal expression characterizes the mode of existence of...entities”. This is a very useful definition, and a way of expressing it I hadn’t heard before (or had forgotten). And it clearly does relate to the general use of the term, from page 3. So it is all tied together. Yet, Borghini does not tie it together. Borghini makes no note of this at all, either on page 3 or page 10. I remember being an undergrad, and how hard it often was to read some texts, and how when I failed I just blamed myself. It takes a keen perception and trained mind to pick out when a text itself is the problem, especially when the tone of the text is that of hand-holding.
Another example: on page 77, the term “relativize” is central to the main point of several paragraphs of text; “the term’s function is to relativize the interpretation of a sentence to a certain context”, “Thus, Forbes can relativize a part of [sentence] (4)”, “the three possibilities are relativized to a different actuality”, and “the strategy of relativizing different actualities produces a result that is satisfying from a formal perspective, but...” A trip to the dictionary yields a predictable definition, “to consider in relation or proportion to something else”, which, with some effort at making conceptual connections, can be shoehorned into the way Borghini is using the term, but it would have been much nicer if Borghini had simply spelled it out for us. Again, this is an introduction.
That might seem trifling. It is given just as a general example. But how about his first use of the term “quantifying over”? This is a whopper. This concept is central to the entire study of modality, and yet Borghini slips it into the text as though it has a general usage that is common knowledge, and one need merely apply it to the present topic. This is not the case at all. It is a specialized term created just for the present topic. Yet he offers no definition at all. (I can’t cite the page as I didn’t mark it when I came across it, and the only index is one of names.) Fortunately, I’ve read Lewis and Nolan’s introduction to Lewis, so I know what quantifying over means. I’ll tell you, since in this case even the philosophical dictionary is not especially helpful: to quantify over is to state or assume a context. When you say “there’s no more beer”, you mean there is no more beer in the house, not there is no more beer in the universe, meaning you are implicitly quantifying over just the house. This is important because, with modality, talking of possible worlds, it’s important to know when a statement quantifies over the actual world and non-actual possible worlds, or just the actual world, and tacitly ignores non-actual possible worlds.
I won’t say that Borghini does this all the time. There is much that is commendable in the text. But he does this enough to frustrate, because the effect is one of coasting along smoothly and then suddenly and without notice hitting a brick wall (in the form of an undefined term) which impedes further progress. I know how to read difficult philosophy. I stop a lot to look things up and take careful notes. I’ve done a lot of work of this type in the philosophy of modality, original works and introductions on Kripke, Lewis, Forbes, P. Mackie, and others. What I was hoping for in this volume was, finally, a clear and straightforward introduction that ties everything together. In this Borghini was pretty successful. But I’m doing almost as much work as I would need to reading a primary source. Primary sources are abstruse for a reason, because they are part of an ongoing conversation. Borghini is abstruse for no good reason, abstruse even when it would be very easy not to be. And so, while offering an overview that does indeed tie things together, he is not making the individual concepts any clearer than the primary sources themselves. So his project is only partially successful.
And I use the simple example of not defining a term, or pointing out its connections, to illustrate what he does more often, which is to drop whole abstruse bits of philosophical jargon and phrasing into otherwise easy to read portions of text, with no notice whatsoever, and no further explanation, as though it should be as easy to understand as the basic sentence that preceded it. In fact, the basic sentence that preceded it implicitly promises a basic, simple-English explanation of something, but what we get is the jargon-filled version, with no notice. Again, when the tone is that of hand-holding, this sort of thing is going to quite discouraging for anyone who doesn’t see that the fault is in the text and not themselves. Here’s an example, from page 96:
“A world is a maximal individual because, in first approximation, it fully occupies a reticulate of external relations. At least for our world and the worlds like ours, such reticulate is a spatio-temporal relation—a specific relation for each world. The definition of maximalist resorts to a maximal external relation...”
The dictionary saves us from “reticulate”: a net or network. But no such salvation is to be had for “external relations”. Even the word “relation” itself is a struggle for me to apply here. It takes a lot of cognitive energy, that Borghini could have saved me with a sentence or two of explanation about what he is talking about. But “external relations”, I simply don’t know. Maybe it will come to me someday.
For me personally, Borghini comes tantalizingly close to shedding light on things I’ve been wondering for some time. For example, I’ve been wanting to understand Quine’s skepticism, which is largely responsible for launching the study of modality (an example of the kind of knowledge Borghini did provide). But Borghini, as in so many other cases, turns on a dime from hand-holding to the adopting of the same abstruse inside-baseball expressions that the original texts use. And so I leave without really having been “introduced” to Quine’s skepticism. Someone just talked over my head in a kind-hearted and encouraging way. And, though I’ve read all of On The Plurality of Worlds, and much else besides, I still do not fully understand Lewis’ objections to ersatzism. I though perhaps an introduction would finally step back far enough to let me conceptualize this in the grand scheme of things. But Borghini quotes from Melia (2000), and just leaves me with a casual tossed-off idiom that remains completely opaque to me (something Lewis himself does repeatedly): “Lewis’ theory that merely possible worlds are concrete objects like our own simply defies belief, and the ersatzer’s theories are not particularly palatable to those with a taste for desert landscapes.” “Desert landscapes”?! Is that a non-sequiter? (I repeat, I’ve read all of On The Plurality of Worlds). The fault is hardly Melia’s. I don’t have the rest of the context. But could Borghini have possibly thought we would understand this? Yet, this portion of the quote is the central thing that Borghini hoped to illustrate, “what are these possible worlds the theorist of possible worlds semantics speaks of?” Are they concrete, or ersatz? I’d love to know Melia’s opinion, but I do not. I guess I will go read Melia to see if he explains it. I’d like to think such a thing would not be necessary in an introduction.
Borghini’s book is a useful and laudable contribution to a field that was in need of an introduction, that is nonetheless at times somewhat maddening. As is often the case when someone who is expert in an abstruse field of knowledge is tasked with introducing it to those who are not expert, Borghini adopts a careful hand-holding tone, but frequently turns on a dime and drops abstruse statements in with no notice. This can be somewhat pernicious, as the tone invites the reader to think they should be able to follow the text, and so when they reach something that makes no sense to them (and especially when that thing follows immediately after some extremely simple statements), an untrained reader is likely to blame him or herself, and conclude that they missed something (that wasn’t actually there) in the blocks of text preceding, or that they are just not clever enough to follow even simple explanations.
I won’t assume “layman” is the intended audience here, but probably rather just a college student who had never heard of modality before, and is now in a class discussing it. Although, in the introduction, Borghini quite clearly invites anyone at all to read the book “Why read a book on the metaphysics of possibility? At first one could argue that it is an abstruse topic reserved only for those with a strong philosophical disposition. Practical individuals are immersed in who they are and what they do, what there is and what happens...” Borghini then gives three reasons practical individuals—everyone—should be interested in possibility, concluding that “we are immersed in [possibility], much more than it might appear at first glance.” Nonetheless, series such as this one are quite plainly for the university crowd.
Some points of confusion.
Borghini uses the word “modalities” on the very next page to the above, page 3, in the sentence “Epistemology concerns the modalities through which a subject acquires information about himself”. This is doubly confusing, because most people don’t know what the term “modality” means in itself, and because the book is about modality, yet the use of modality in this instance, the first use of modality in this book, is not in reference to the specific topic of the book, but to the general definition of the term, which again, most people don’t know. So I went to the dictionary. I was interested to discover that it is “a means to attaining an end; a method; a form of sensory perception”. I have been studying the philosophy of modality (the very topic of this book) for three years, and did not know this general definition of the term. Also, upon reading this definition, it was not immediately clear to me that it related to the philosophy of modality; I thought perhaps it was just a coincidence or that there was merely a very distant and not particularly important relationship between the two terms. So here’s the problems: first, anyone who needs a definition of epistemology will need a definition of “modality”, in this general sense. This would be true even if this term didn’t match the topic of the book. It seems that a book that is attempting to hand-hold through a difficult subject would provide a quick gloss on the term, or alternate phrasing. And second, the term “modality” as the topic of the book is not explained until page 10. There he says a “modal expression characterizes the mode of existence of...entities”. This is a very useful definition, and a way of expressing it I hadn’t heard before (or had forgotten). And it clearly does relate to the general use of the term, from page 3. So it is all tied together. Yet, Borghini does not tie it together. Borghini makes no note of this at all, either on page 3 or page 10. I remember being an undergrad, and how hard it often was to read some texts, and how when I failed I just blamed myself. It takes a keen perception and trained mind to pick out when a text itself is the problem, especially when the tone of the text is that of hand-holding.
Another example: on page 77, the term “relativize” is central to the main point of several paragraphs of text; “the term’s function is to relativize the interpretation of a sentence to a certain context”, “Thus, Forbes can relativize a part of [sentence] (4)”, “the three possibilities are relativized to a different actuality”, and “the strategy of relativizing different actualities produces a result that is satisfying from a formal perspective, but...” A trip to the dictionary yields a predictable definition, “to consider in relation or proportion to something else”, which, with some effort at making conceptual connections, can be shoehorned into the way Borghini is using the term, but it would have been much nicer if Borghini had simply spelled it out for us. Again, this is an introduction.
That might seem trifling. It is given just as a general example. But how about his first use of the term “quantifying over”? This is a whopper. This concept is central to the entire study of modality, and yet Borghini slips it into the text as though it has a general usage that is common knowledge, and one need merely apply it to the present topic. This is not the case at all. It is a specialized term created just for the present topic. Yet he offers no definition at all. (I can’t cite the page as I didn’t mark it when I came across it, and the only index is one of names.) Fortunately, I’ve read Lewis and Nolan’s introduction to Lewis, so I know what quantifying over means. I’ll tell you, since in this case even the philosophical dictionary is not especially helpful: to quantify over is to state or assume a context. When you say “there’s no more beer”, you mean there is no more beer in the house, not there is no more beer in the universe, meaning you are implicitly quantifying over just the house. This is important because, with modality, talking of possible worlds, it’s important to know when a statement quantifies over the actual world and non-actual possible worlds, or just the actual world, and tacitly ignores non-actual possible worlds.
I won’t say that Borghini does this all the time. There is much that is commendable in the text. But he does this enough to frustrate, because the effect is one of coasting along smoothly and then suddenly and without notice hitting a brick wall (in the form of an undefined term) which impedes further progress. I know how to read difficult philosophy. I stop a lot to look things up and take careful notes. I’ve done a lot of work of this type in the philosophy of modality, original works and introductions on Kripke, Lewis, Forbes, P. Mackie, and others. What I was hoping for in this volume was, finally, a clear and straightforward introduction that ties everything together. In this Borghini was pretty successful. But I’m doing almost as much work as I would need to reading a primary source. Primary sources are abstruse for a reason, because they are part of an ongoing conversation. Borghini is abstruse for no good reason, abstruse even when it would be very easy not to be. And so, while offering an overview that does indeed tie things together, he is not making the individual concepts any clearer than the primary sources themselves. So his project is only partially successful.
And I use the simple example of not defining a term, or pointing out its connections, to illustrate what he does more often, which is to drop whole abstruse bits of philosophical jargon and phrasing into otherwise easy to read portions of text, with no notice whatsoever, and no further explanation, as though it should be as easy to understand as the basic sentence that preceded it. In fact, the basic sentence that preceded it implicitly promises a basic, simple-English explanation of something, but what we get is the jargon-filled version, with no notice. Again, when the tone is that of hand-holding, this sort of thing is going to quite discouraging for anyone who doesn’t see that the fault is in the text and not themselves. Here’s an example, from page 96:
“A world is a maximal individual because, in first approximation, it fully occupies a reticulate of external relations. At least for our world and the worlds like ours, such reticulate is a spatio-temporal relation—a specific relation for each world. The definition of maximalist resorts to a maximal external relation...”
The dictionary saves us from “reticulate”: a net or network. But no such salvation is to be had for “external relations”. Even the word “relation” itself is a struggle for me to apply here. It takes a lot of cognitive energy, that Borghini could have saved me with a sentence or two of explanation about what he is talking about. But “external relations”, I simply don’t know. Maybe it will come to me someday.
For me personally, Borghini comes tantalizingly close to shedding light on things I’ve been wondering for some time. For example, I’ve been wanting to understand Quine’s skepticism, which is largely responsible for launching the study of modality (an example of the kind of knowledge Borghini did provide). But Borghini, as in so many other cases, turns on a dime from hand-holding to the adopting of the same abstruse inside-baseball expressions that the original texts use. And so I leave without really having been “introduced” to Quine’s skepticism. Someone just talked over my head in a kind-hearted and encouraging way. And, though I’ve read all of On The Plurality of Worlds, and much else besides, I still do not fully understand Lewis’ objections to ersatzism. I though perhaps an introduction would finally step back far enough to let me conceptualize this in the grand scheme of things. But Borghini quotes from Melia (2000), and just leaves me with a casual tossed-off idiom that remains completely opaque to me (something Lewis himself does repeatedly): “Lewis’ theory that merely possible worlds are concrete objects like our own simply defies belief, and the ersatzer’s theories are not particularly palatable to those with a taste for desert landscapes.” “Desert landscapes”?! Is that a non-sequiter? (I repeat, I’ve read all of On The Plurality of Worlds). The fault is hardly Melia’s. I don’t have the rest of the context. But could Borghini have possibly thought we would understand this? Yet, this portion of the quote is the central thing that Borghini hoped to illustrate, “what are these possible worlds the theorist of possible worlds semantics speaks of?” Are they concrete, or ersatz? I’d love to know Melia’s opinion, but I do not. I guess I will go read Melia to see if he explains it. I’d like to think such a thing would not be necessary in an introduction.
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Top reviews from other countries
Matteo
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful book!
Reviewed in Italy 🇮🇹 on July 10, 2017
5 stars and nothing less! This book is a very up-to-date handbook. It is carefully written and concerns a set of philosophical studies that is clearly difficult to understand deeply. Despite this, the author is very good at acquaint the reader with the main concepts and problems of the metaphysics of modality.
I suggest to every philosopher that wants to increase his knowledgne about those theories and in this field to get the book!
I suggest to every philosopher that wants to increase his knowledgne about those theories and in this field to get the book!
Mel
5.0 out of 5 stars
Comprehensive
Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on May 20, 2019
fast delivery. The work is a master piece
