Modality and Tense

Modality and Tense brings together eleven of Kit Fine's articles on these topics, spanning the past three decades. The collection does not include his influential work on essence and dependence or his technical work on modality. Aided by a terrific introduction that sets the stage and provides a useful summary, the collection is quite well unified. The result is a demanding book that abounds in insight, penetrating analysis and subtle distinctions. The theme of the collection is a battle on two fronts concerning modality and kindred notions. On one front, Fine is arguing against a broadly empiricist tradition represented by W.V. Quine and David Lewis, which attempts to reduce all modal claims to claims about regularities (within, respectively, our actual universe and Lewis' pluriverse). In contrast with this empiricist tradition, Fine is a modalist (that is, he insists on the distinctive and irreducible character of modal notions), and an actualist (that is, he holds that there is a fundamental ontological difference between actual and merely possible objects). On another front, Fine is arguing against a metaphysical tradition initiated by Saul Kripke, which accepts a primitive notion of metaphysical possibility and attempts to reduce all other modal notions to it. In contrast with this ‘modal monism’, Fine holds that there are a variety of related but distinct notions of modal significance. I describe each front in turn. (Space prevents me from commenting on the only essay explicitly concerned with time, the previously unpublished ‘Tense and Reality’.)

Empiricism · Epistemology · Linguistics · Metaphysics · Modal · Modality (human–computer interaction) · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science