Modalities by Perspective

Beschreibung

We all say sometimes that we could have done otherwise, that possibilities were open to us. Given that determinism is true, how could that be? Can the world develop in one way only? If so, how can we then talk of alternative possibilities, of possibilities open to us? This book shows that Aristotle and the Stoics offered a solution to the problem, which consists in relaxing the strictness of the concept of idproduct needed in statements such as ‚in these circumstances, x could have done otherwise‘. The theory is also reconstructed in terms of contemporary modal logic. The book focuses on the connection between the horizon of information that somebody has at a particular time and the use of modal terms.