Philosophy Lexicon of Arguments

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Modal properties: are properties that are not attributed actually to an object, but are attributed in a possible world. A modal property is e.g. the property of being happier under other circumstances. The question is whether an object in the actual world must have a certain quality in order to have different properties in another world. See also modal logic, modal realism, possible worlds, centered worlds, contingency, possibility, necessity, properties, extensionality.


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I 126
Property, modal/possible worlds/existence/Bigelow/Pargetter: sometimes it is said that for an object to have a property, it must exist. That excludes fictional objects.
Bigelow/Pargetter: if we were to demand this, we would demand that an individual in the possible world w be mapped to a set of possible worlds all containing this individual. In this case, an n-digit predicate could not be mapped if there are not n individuals in one and the same possible world. This is worth investigating, even if modal realism rejects it.
I 203
Instantiation/Existence/Bigelow/Pargetter: thesis: even uninstantiated properties exist. It is they who constitute the possible world.
Possible worlds/Bigelow/Pargetter: are universals. Namely, complex structural universals. (see above Chapter 2, for example, chemical molecules: several universals are represented there with several instantiations, but a universal never occurs more than once in a constellation.)
Possibility/Property/Bigelow/Pargetter: one could argue that not every uninstantiated property is possible. There can only be non-contradictory properties. So modal terms come in again.
Solution/Bigelow/Pargetter: there are simply no contradictory properties. That is why we are saving the modality here. Certainly there are contradictory predicates, but they do not correspond to universals.


Big I
J. Bigelow, R. Pargetter
Science and Necessity Cambridge 1990

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Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2018-04-24