Accessibility, Kinds, and Laws: A Structural Explication

"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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhilosophy of science Vol. 61; no. 3; pp. 389 - 406
Main Author Mormann, Thomas
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chicago, IL Philosophy of Science Association 01.09.1994
University of Chicago Press
Michigan State University, Dept. of Philosophy
Cambridge University Press
Subjects
Accessibility relation
Aristotelianism
Epistemology. Philosophy of science. Theory of knowledge
Geometry
Logic
Mathematical relations
Mathematical sets
Modal realism
Natural law
Philosophy
Philosophy of law
Spacetime
Uniform laws
Uniformity
Logical Necessity
Law
Accessibility
Semantics
Genus
Magic
Structure
Modality
Representationalism
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Summary:"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.
ISSN:0031-8248
1539-767X
DOI:10.1086/289810