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Bressan and Suppes on Modality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Bas C. Van Fraassen
Bas C. Van Fraassen*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Professors Bressan and Suppes have both argued that modality is of great importance to the philosophy of science. I shall not dispute this, but I shall raise some problems of interpretation, which arise if one considers the possibility of a philosophical retrenchment with respect to the use of modal concepts.

Professor Bressan uses the discussion initiated by Mach's attempted definition of mass as a paradigm example of the use of modal concepts in foundational work in physics. He mentions the modal terms used in informal axiomatizations of mechanics which followed Mach, and explains how mass is defined in his own formalized axiomatic mechanics.

On the other hand, in his book Introduction to Logic, Professor Suppes had said unequivocally that he knew of no problem in philosophy of science to which modality is relevant.

Type
Part VIII Symposium: Modality and the Analysis of Scientific Propositions
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1972 , 1972 , pp. 323 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company

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References

Notes

1 Suppes, P., Introduction to Logic, Van Nostrand, Princeton, 1957, p. 298.Google Scholar

2 For references and discussion, see Jammer, M., Concepts of Mass, Harper, New York, 1964, pp. 92-95Google Scholar; Pendse's papers are in the Philosophical Magazine 24 (1937)Google Scholar; 27 (1939); and 29 (1940).

3 Simon, H., ‘Discussion: The Axioms of Classical Mechanics’, Philosophy of Science 21 (1954) 340-343CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Definable Terms and Primitives in Axiom Systems’, in The Axiomatic Method (ed. by Henkin, L. et al), North-Holland, Amsterdam 1954, pp. 443-453Google Scholar; ‘A Note on Almost-Everywhere Definability’ (abstract), Journal of Symbolic Logic 31 (1966) 705-706.Google Scholar

4 Stalnaker, R., ‘A Theory of Conditionals’, in Studies in Logical Theory (ed. by Rescher, N.), Oxford 1968, pp. 98-112Google Scholar; Stalnaker, R. and Thomason, R. H., ‘A Semantic Analysis of Conditional Logic’, Theoria 36 (1970) 23-42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For references and discussion, see my Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space, Random House, New York, 1970 (henceforth IPTS), Chapter VI, Sections 2 and 3.

6 Grünbaum, A., ‘Why I Am Afraid of Absolute Space’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 49 (1971) 96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 For one line of thought, see IPTS, pp. 97-107 and 195-198; for another, my ‘Meaning Relations, Possible Objects, and Possible Worlds’ (with K. Lambert) in Philosophical Problems in Logic (ed. by K. Lambert), Reidel, Dordrecht 1970, pp. 1-19.

8 See my ‘Theories and Counterfactuals’ forthcoming in a Festschrift in honour of Wilfrid Sellars (ed. by H.-N. Castañeda)and Thomason, R. H., ‘A Fitch-Style Formulation of Conditional Logic’, Logique et Analyse 13 (1970) 397-412Google Scholar; last paragraph.

9 Mackey, G. W., The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, W. A. Benjamin, New York 1963, pp. 1-4.Google Scholar A similar point could be made with reference to H. Simon's first approach in his ‘The Axioms of Newtonian Mechanics’, Philosophical Magazine 38 (1947) 888-905Google Scholar, and ‘The Axioms of Classical Mechanics’ (see note 3).