Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:08:09.105Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Accessibility, Kinds, and Laws: A Structural Explication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Thomas Mormann
Thomas Mormann*
Affiliation:
Institut für Philosophie, Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, Institut für Philosophie, Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Ludwigstrasse 31, 80539 München, Germany.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

“Accessibility” is a crucial concept of possible worlds semantics. The simplest approach to accessibility is the “magical theory” that construes this relation as analogous to spatial or temporal relations. In this paper I give a nonmagical structural account of the accessibility relation that can be used to give a necessitarian account of kinds and laws. Laws are characterized in a structural way as stable invariants of the world's gestalt. Finally, I point out how the structural approach can be embedded in a general representational theory of modality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 389 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I thank Thomas E. Uebel for linguistic advice and some valuable suggestions.

References

Armstrong, D. M. (1978), Universals and Scientific Realism, vols. 1–2. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Armstrong, D. M. (1983), What is a Law of Nature? Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Armstrong, D. M. (1989), A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139172226CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bigelow, J. (1988), “Real Possibilities”, Philosophical Studies 53: 37–64.10.1007/BF00355675CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bigelow, J. (1990), “The World Essence”, Dialogue 29: 205–217.10.1017/S001221730001297XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bigelow, J.; Ellis, B.; Lierse, C. (1992), “The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature”, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science 43: 371–388.10.1093/bjps/43.3.371CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bigelow, J. and Pargetter, R. (1990), Science and Necessity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Carroll, J. W. (1987), “Ontology and the Laws of Nature”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 65: 261–276.10.1080/00048408712342931CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davey, B. A. and Priestley, H. A. (1990), Introduction to Lattices and Order. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dretske, F. I. (1977), “Laws of Nature”, Philosophy of Science 44: 248–268.10.1086/288741CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman, N. (1955), Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ibarra, A. and Mormann, T. (1992), “Structural Analogies between Mathematical and Empirical Theories”, in Echeverria, J., Ibarra, A., and Mormann, T., (eds.), The Space of Mathematics., Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 31–46.Google Scholar
Klein, F. ([1872] 1921), Vergleichende Betrachtungen über geometrische Forschungen, Gesammelte mathematische Abhandlungen, vol. 1. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1973), Counterfactuals. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1986), On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mormann, T. (1992), “Structural Accessibility and Similarity of Possible Worlds”, Journal of Philosophical Logic 21: 149–172.10.1007/BF00248636CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mundy, B. (1986), “On the General Theory of Meaningful Representation”, Synthese 67: 391–437.10.1007/BF00485942CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pargetter, R. (1984), “Laws and Modal Realism”, Philosophical Studies 46: 335–347.10.1007/BF00372911CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, B. (1981), “Tractarian Nominalism”, Philosophical Studies 40: 199–206.10.1007/BF00353791CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, B. (1993), “Logical Atoms and Combinatorial Possibility”, Journal of Philosophy 90: 219–232.10.2307/2940910CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stalnaker, R. C. (1968), “A Theory of Conditionals”, in Rescher, N., (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory: Essays., Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 98–112.Google Scholar
Swoyer, C. (1991), “Structural Representation and Surrogative Reasoning”, Synthese 87: 449–508.10.1007/BF00499820CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tooley, M. (1987), Causation: A Realist Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Vallentyne, P. (1988), “Explaining Lawhood”, Philosophy of Science 55: 598–613.10.1086/289463CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, B. C. (1989), Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press.10.1093/0198248601.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar