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How to Make Possibility Safe for Empiricists

Norton, John D. (2021) How to Make Possibility Safe for Empiricists. [Preprint]

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Abstract

What is possible, according to the empiricist conception, is what our evidence positively allows; and what is necessary is what it compels. These notions, along with logical possibility, are the only defensible notions of possibility and necessity. In so far as nomic and metaphysical possibilities are defensible, they fall within empirical possibility. These empirical conceptions are incompatible with traditional possible world semantics. Empirically necessary propositions cannot be defined as those true in all possible worlds. There can be empirical possibilities without empirical necessities. The duality of possibility and necessity can be degenerate and can even be falsified.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Norton, John D.jdnorton@pitt.edu0000-0003-0936-5308
Keywords: empiricism empirical necessity possibility
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
General Issues > Laws of Nature
Depositing User: John Norton
Date Deposited: 21 Jun 2022 12:57
Last Modified: 21 Jun 2022 12:57
Item ID: 20769
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
General Issues > Laws of Nature
Date: 26 August 2021
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/20769

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