Abstract: According to David Lewis's influential counterpart theory, what's possible for an individual depends on its representatives, or counterparts: Humphrey could have won just in case he has a counterpart that won. This talk will explore an extension of Lewis's theory from individuals to properties and propositions. According to this view, for example, Humphrey could have won just in case he has a counterpart that instantiates some counterpart of winning; the proposition that Humphrey won could have been true just in case it has a counterpart that has some counterpart of truth.
We begin with motivations. First, several prominent motivations for counterpart theory naturally generalise from individuals to properties and propositions. Second, the view enables a Lewisian reduction of modality without Lewis’s ontology of concrete possibilia and possible worlds.
We then consider some consequences of the view for absolute necessity and logical necessity, the substitutivity of identicals, the necessity of identity, and property abstraction. We argue that several of these consequences arise because counterpart-theoretic modality is representation sensitive: modal truth depends not just on the entities represented but also the way in which they’re represented. Although this representation sensitivity is present in Lewis's theory, extending counterparts to properties and propositions makes it much more pervasive.
Registration: If you do not hold a university card, please contact the seminar convenor or at least two working days before a seminar to register your attendance.
Metaphysics and Epistemology Group Convenors: Nick Jones, Bernhard Salow and Alex Kaiserman
