Modalities Philosophical Essays [Paperback]

Based on her earlier ground-breaking axiomatization of quantified modal logic, the papers collected here by the distinguished philosopher Ruth Barcan Marcus cover much ground in the development of her thought, spanning from 1961 to 1990. The first essay here introduces themes initially viewed as iconoclastic, such as the necessity of identity, the directly referential role of proper names as tags , the Barcan Formula about the interplay of possibility and existence, and alternative interpretations of quantification. Marcus also addresses the putative puzzles about substitutivity and about essentialism. The collection also includes influential essays on moral conflict, on belief and rationality, and on some historical figures. Many of her views have been incorporated into current theories, while others remain part of a continuing debate.

1. Introduction
2. Modalities and Intensional Languages
3. Iterated Deontic Modalities
4. Essentialism in Modal Logic
5. Essential attribution
Appendix: Strict implication, deducibility and the deduction theorem
6. Quantification and ontology
7. Classes, collections, assortments, and individuals
8. Does the principle of substitutivity rest on a mistake?
9. Nominalism and the substitutional quantifier
10. Moral dilemmas and consistency
11. Rationality and believing the impossible
12. Spinoza and the ontological proof
13. On some post-1920s views of Russell on particularity, identity and individiation
14. Possibilia and possible worlds
15. A backward look at Quine's animadversions on modalities
16. Some revisionary proposals about belief and believing

The essays collected here are enduring contributions that have deeply affected the course of twentieth-century philosophy. Reading them together reminds one forcefully of the ingenuity, power, and unity of thought of a most philosophical logician, and a most logical philosopher. --Review ofMetaphysics