| Abstract: | Let a modal truth be any truth that is about modal entities, such as essences, abilities, or dispositional properties, or that contains modal expressions such as: possibly, necessarily, may, must, could, would, can, and so on. Examples of modal truths include: It is impossible that I jump to the moon; Necessarily, God exists; Lea has the ability to brighten one's day; Were I hungrier, I would make more noodles. That there are modal truths is largely uncontroversial. What feature of reality grounds the truth of modal propositions, what makes them true, is considerably controversial, however. Modal dispositionalism is a theory about what makes at least some modal propositions true. It maintains that irreducibly modal dispositions are what make (at least some) modal propositions true. In my thesis, I more fully develop modal dispositionalism and so show it to be a potentially viable theory of modality. In particular, I improve on already extant formulations of the theory, position it as a Neo-Aristotelian view with advantages over its close contemporary cousins, and make explicit certain of its ontologically heavy consequences. If successful, my discussion demonstrates that modal dispositionalism is a realist, actualist, non-reductive account of modality. Additionally, it is shown that a basic formulation of modal dispositionalism, MD, is committed to the existence of either an actual infinity of contingent beings or to at least one necessary being. A reformulation of MD is shown to avoid commitment to an actual infinity of contingent beings and to validate two necessary axioms for S5. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/155301 |
|---|