268 BOOK REVIEWS  RECENZIE

Acknowledgement (Grant ID #15637)

This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John
Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the au-
thor and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
I would like to thank Zoltán Boldizsár Simon for his valuable comments on an earlier
draft of the review. This does not mean, however, that he agrees with the views pre-
sented here.

References
TIMMINS, A. (2012): Review of Frank Ankersmit’s Lost Historical Cause: A Journey from
Language to Experience. Reviews in History, available at:
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1245

Timothy Williamson: Modal Logic as Metaphysics

Oxford University Press 2013, 464 pages

What there is, what there might be and what there cannot be? Are some
things merely possible, could events in the world be otherwise, do past and fu-
ture situations exist in the same manner as those present do? Questions like
these have been bothering philosophers for ages and still stand in the very core
of metaphysical debates. However, purely metaphysical considerations like the
above ones very often terminated in conceptual confusions. They turned out to
be more confusing than elucidating, more obscure than clear, and sadly, more
pseudophilosophical than philosophical. In his new book, Timothy Williamson
breaks the barriers. His Modal Logic as Metaphysics gives some precise connec-
tions between the model theory and the metaphysics and aims to put meta-
physics on the same level as science.
In eight chapters (Contingentism and Necessitism; The Barcan Formula
and its Converse: Early Developments; Possible Worlds Model Theory; Predi-
cation and Modality; From First-Order to Higher-Order Modal Logic; Inten-
sional Comprehension Principles and Metaphysics; Mappings between Contin-
gentist and Necessitist Discourse; Consequences of Necessitism and Methodo-
logical Afterword) Williamson argues for the claim that one of the roles of
quantified modal logic is to supply a central structural core to theories of modal
metaphysics. Williamson provides various highly technical arguments, all of
which are based on strong modal logic as the arbiter in theory choice. He pro-
poses to look at metaphysical problems through the prism of normal scientific
standards, namely through the strongest and systematic logical theories. It is
 BOOK REVIEWS  RECENZIE 269

due to the fact that formally developed metaphysics and science have a lot of in
common. Both of them use formal methods and pursue theories with the most
theoretical benefits at the least theoretical costs. Moreover, metaphysics as well
as science do reject a part of common sense for the sake of simplicity, explana-
tory power, elegance, and economy in principle.
As far as I can see, Williamson’s strategy is (at least) a four-step enterprise.
Firstly, we should find a sufficiently strong logic interpreted by an appropriate
semantics. Secondly, some sufficiently universal theorems should be provable in
the logic. Thirdly, the logic have to be sound as well as complete for meta-
physical universality, meaning that “propositional modal logic, S, is sound for
metaphysical universality if and only if every theorem of S is metaphysically
universal; [and] is complete for metaphysical universality if and only if every
metaphysically universal formula of the language is a theorem of S” (p. 95). Fi-
nally, it is the appropriately interpreted logical system that forms the structural
core of the most feasible metaphysical theory. According to Williamson, meta-
physical theories of modality are best formulated in a precise formal language.
In particular, Williamson has for it that it is quantified modal logic – higher-
order S5 with the classical rules of inference, identity and plural quantificatio n
– that is the most prominent guide in theoretical philosophizing.
Given the formal requirements mentioned above, Modal Logic as Metaphys-
ics argues on behalf of necessitism standing against contingetism. Necessitism is
a thesis according to which necessarily everything is such that necessarily it is
identical with something. Put more briefly, necessarily everything is necessarily
something (p. 2). So, according to necessitism, there could not have been more
things than there actually are, there could not even be fewer things than there
actually are. What there (unrestrictedly) exists is not contingent. What is con-
tingent, on the other side, is the distribution of properties and relations on
what exists.
Undeniably, a man on the street would object immediately since, as com-
mon sense dictates, at least some things are contingent. Ordinary objects like
dogs, cars, chairs and tables would not exist were the actual circumstances be
otherwise. Similarly, it seems rather odd to say that Kripke’s (possible) seventh
son necessarily exists. Since actuality says he doesn’t and given that actuality
implies possibility, it is a perfectly respectable possibility that Kripke’s seventh
son does not exist, full stop.
As controversial and counterintuitive as the thesis of necessitism might
seem, Williamson takes it as a preferable alternative, nonetheless. In the book,
he adduces a large number of claims, arguments and comments on various ob-
jections against his stance. For example, it is argued that although all individu-
als actually exist and are necessary beings, not all of them are necessar-
270 BOOK REVIEWS  RECENZIE

ily concrete. Some of them – those traditionally and pre-theoretically conceived

as contingent – are only contingently concrete. He thus dismisses common
sense as the ultimate guide in metaphysics. Since common sense has limited
authority, various claims about contingency and necessity can properly be
evaluated by theoretical enquiry only.
Next, several up-to-time debates are according to Williamson desperately
unclear. He explicitly mentions the one between actualism and possibilism, ar-
guing that the actualist principle is supposed to claim something like ‘Every-
thing is actual’. Since whatever is is, whatever is actually is: if there is some-
thing, then there actually is such a thing. So on this understanding it turns out
to be utterly trivial in modal logic. Consequently, actualism is trivially true and
possibilism trivially false. Williamson warns us that unless we resort to another
reading of ‘actual’ than the one well understood in modal logic the debates
reach a deadlock.
For Williamson, one way of keeping the modal discourse under control is
to abandon the distinction as hopelessly muddled, and to get on with the clear-
er necessitism-contingentism debate. Such a reorientation of modal metaphys-
ics debate around the necessitism-contingentism suggests that unless the ac-
tualist provides another reading of ‘actual’ the (traditional) notion of actuality
as contrasted with possibility does not bring any theoretical advantages. Since
the notion ‘actual’ plays an indispensable role in defining possibilism, without
an appropriate grasp of it possibilism is not a feasible alternative.
One might, however, worry as to what exactly “actuality”, or “the actual
world” means in that context. In fact, there are (at least) two notions of the
world that should not be confused and, consequently, two quite different actu-
alist/possibilist distinctions at issue. And although Williamson gives us a clue
when he asks what actuality is and why it is contrasted with possibility rather
than with possibility-cum-impossibility, it is still not clear what is the notion
of “actual” Williamson denies.
In the possibility-cum-impossibility debates, it has been argued that there
is no cogent reason to presuppose an ontological difference between merely
possible worlds and impossible worlds (Priest 1997, 581). Vander Laan’s wor-
ries go in a similar vein as, he says, we lack such a principle of ontology that
would justify our construing these similar parts of our modal language in such
dissimilar ways (Vander Laan 1997, 599).
Now, the question is whether we should be willing to admit such arbitrari-
ness in the actual-cum-possible distinction too. After all, even the so-called er-
satzers, qua actualists, are happy to admit two different senses of the term
“world”. On one side, there is the real world, the spatio-temporal concrete un-
iverse that we as concrete individuals occupy. There are chairs, people, planets,
 BOOK REVIEWS  RECENZIE 271

pugs and all the things we experience. On the other side, they’re happy to ad-
mit that it is the abstract representation rather than concrete bunch of stuff
that deserves the name “world”. Given this understanding the term “world”
picks out an entity ontologically different from the concrete sum of individuals.
Rather, it picks out some ersatz representation of a way the world might have
been.
It seems that an analogous confusion has infected the meaning of “actual”
too. For, notions like “the actual world”, or “actuality” may be used by actual-
ists as meaning different things. They mean either a thesis

(1) Everything is actual (terminological actualism)

or a thesis

(2) Actuality consists of everything that is spatiotemporally related to us,

and nothing more. It is not vastly bigger, or less unified, than we are
accustomed to think (Lewis 1986, 100).

In the former, the reference of “actual” concerns trivial analytic truth; yet, in
the latter it doesn’t (Lewis 1986, 99). Naturally, Williamson recognizes the two
meanings of “actual” while he adds that the difference between (1) and (2) is
not something that is at stake here. But that does not have to be the case. For,
as far as we disambiguate the use of “actual” in such a way that we a) indicate
its different uses and b) explicitly grasp the philosophically appealing one, tri-
viality of actualism and, a fortiori, impossibility of possibilism, disappears.
Namely, taken (1) as leading in the actualism-possibilism debate, it makes
sense to derive from the fact a) that there is a talking donkey and the fact that
b) whatever is actually is that there actually is a talking donkey. But if we con-
sider actuality non-trivially, as a restricted quantification, the inference is
blocked. And an introducing an actuality operator that shifts its extension from
world to world can do the job (see also Yagisawa 2013).
There is, undeniably, much more to be said about the arguments and
comments Williamson makes throughout the whole book. But everybody who
had a chance to read it must admit that it is a unique and precise philosophical
enterprise. Beside the fact that it demonstrates how powerful the connection
between logic and metaphysics is, the book makes a clear case that metaphysi-
cal reasoning is meaningful only when backed up by its decent and strong logi-
cal counterpart.
Martin Vacek
[email protected]
272 BOOK REVIEWS  RECENZIE

References
LEWIS, D. (1986): On the Plurality of Worlds. Blackwell.
PRIEST, G. (1997): Sylvan’s Box: A Short Story and Ten Morals. Notre Dame Journal of
Formal Logic 38, No. 4, 573-582.
VANDER LAAN, D. (1997): The Ontology of Impossible Worlds. Notre Dame Journal of
Formal Logic 38, No. 4, 597-620.
YAGISAWA, T. (2013): Review of Modal Logic as Metaphysics. Notre Dame Philosophical
Reviews, No. 10, 15.

Huw Price: Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, xii + 204 pages

Naturalism is usually understood as a matter of letting natural science de-

cide the question of what there is. What natural science tells us there is, there
is; and what it tells us there is not, is not. Of course, an entity prima facie not
recognized by natural science may, after investigation, turn out to be a natura-
listically respectable entity after all, but just viewed from an unusual angle, or
a conglomerate of naturalistically respectable entities, or perhaps a correlate of
our odd way of speaking about naturalistically respectable entities – therefore
we need something as “philosophical analysis” to tell us which entities are only
prima facie incompatible with naturalism, and which are really at odds with it
(and hence do not qualify as entities at all). If something does not survive such
a scrutiny, the naturalist is at liberty to dismiss it as just a phantasm of a con-
fused human mind.
Quine (1969, 26) takes pains to stress a different aspect of naturalism:
“knowledge, mind, and meaning”, he claims, “are part of the same world that
they have to do with, and … they are to be studied in the same empirical spirit
that animates natural science.” This might seem to be just a special case of the
general tenet: if everything that there is is to be sanctioned by natural science,
then surely “knowledge, mind, and meaning” are. Huw Price, in the book un-
der review, argues that the Quinean urge marks a specific variety of naturalism –
which Price calls subject naturalism. And he goes on to argue that this variety of
naturalism must precede the seemingly more general object naturalism that
grants science the right to arbitrate ontology.
According to Price, the reason for distinguishing between subject natural-
ism and object naturalism is connected to the fact that our theories of the
world, especially scientific theories, are inevitably couched in language. Hence,
to let science sanction the existence of an X, we must assume that the word we