Modalities: Philosophical Essays

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.

Table of Contents:
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

Review :
"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 of Metaphysics "Collects most of Marcus's profoundly influential attempts to illuminate the formal structure and metaphysical underpinnings of model discourse....Provides an extraordinary feast of reason and imagination; it is deeply provocative and contains some of the most influential philosophy of this century."--Journal of Philosophy "Marcus's ideas on identity an naming that are so carefully presented in the essays of Modalities have become part of the fabric of contemporary philosophy. Her theory of belief is exciting and potentially just as important....Modalities unquestionably belongs on the bookshelf of every philosopher."--British Journal for the Philosophy of Science "[An] admirable book....Marcus's contributions to philosophical logic, which have been relatively neglected, are impressive; and I hope the publication of this book will help give her work the recognition it deserves."--International Journal of Philosophical Studies "I enthusiastically recommend this book to those interested in either contemporary or historical issues related to Marcus's work....An interesting and relevant collection."--The Philosophical Review "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 of Metaphysics "Collects most of Marcus's profoundly influential attempts to illuminate the formal structure and metaphysical underpinnings of model discourse....Provides an extraordinary feast of reason and imagination; it is deeply provocative and contains some of the most influential philosophy of this century."--Journal of Philosophy "Marcus's ideas on identity an naming that are so carefully presented in the essays of Modalities have become part of the fabric of contemporary philosophy. Her theory of belief is exciting and potentially just as important....Modalities unquestionably belongs on the bookshelf of every philosopher."--British Journal for the Philosophy of Science "[An] admirable book....Marcus's contributions to philosophical logic, which have been relatively neglected, are impressive; and I hope the publication of this book will help give her work the recognition it deserves."--International Journal of Philosophical Studies "I enthusiastically recommend this book to those interested in either contemporary or historical issues related to Marcus's work....An interesting and relevant collection."--The Philosophical Review "The great contribution Marcus has made to several of intensely discussed topics in philosophy might not have been noticed fully without this collection of some of her most important articles that makes it evident that her achievement is not limited to inventing the famous Barcan formula."--Erkenntnis "Marcus's ideas on identity and naming that are so carefully presented in the essays of Modalities have become part of the fabric of contemporary philosophy. Her theory of belief is exciting and potentially just as important....Modalities unquestionably belongs on the bookshelf of every philosopher."--British Journal of the Philosophy of Science." "The whole picture which emerges from this book is of someone at the centre of the philosophical stage for many years, engaging in the most disfficult areas of the subject and provoking and being provoked by the finest minds in the discipline, among whom we must certainly count Marcus herself."--Phil. & Phen. Research "The appearance of this nicely edited collection of fifteen of [the author's] most important philosophical papers, reprinted with minor revisions and corrections, is most opportune, as this often seminal work has recently begun to receive the recognition it deserves."--Mathematical Reviews