Colloquium: Modality, Tense and Truth

Colloquium organized by the Department of the History of Philosophy, with talks by Irene Binini and Bob Pasnau

Programme

Abelard’s modal theory in its 'fourth dimension'

Modal metaphysics, essentialism, possible worlds.

Irene Binini (University of Parma and University of Toronto)

As Marenbon has remarked, “for historians of philosophy, time should have four dimensions. Three of them relate just to the philosophers who are being studied”, considering their present, past and future. “The fourth dimension lies in the relation between the past thinkers and philosophy today, between their time and our present” (Marenbon 2013). Taking this fourth dimension into consideration, in this talk I wish to say something on the relations that could be established between contemporary debates on the metaphysics and epistemology of modalities and Abelard’s modal theories.Ever since Abelard’s theories on modalities had been first brought to light, scholars have held contrasting views on whether contemporary models – in particular, that of possible worlds and of synchronic modalities – could be appropriately invoked to clarify and systematize some of his ideas on possibility and necessity. According to some interpreters, Abelard indeed thought of possibilities in counterfactual terms, and explicitly included the idea of synchronic modalities in his modal paradigm, such as the possibility that someone has of being seated in the very moment in which she is standing, an idea he used to justify the contingency of some present and past events. A semantics of possible situations or ‘worlds’ seems appropriate to capture Abelard’s appeal to non-actualized states of affairs in order to ground the truth of certain modal claims.Already in 1991 and then again more recently, however, Marenbon has remarked that caution should be paid when attributing a possible-worlds framework – however historically rephrased – to Abelard. There seem in fact to be, in Abelard’s views, elements that would be in contrast with the idea that modal propositions should be evaluated on the basis of alternative situations, not last his nominalist ontology.In this talk, I wish to re-open the issue of Abelard and possible worlds by considering some new textual evidence on the matter (in particular, new passages about Abelard’s acceptance of unactualized and unactualizable possibilities) and by tracing new parallels with contemporary discussions on the ontology of modalities. In particular, I will consider whether some of the contemporary ‘actualist’ modal theories (e.g. dispositionalism, new essentialism) are better suited for interpreting Abelard’s modal views than the possible-worlds apparatus.

Irene Binini's website