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Uygar Abaci presents a comprehensive study of Immanuel Kant's theory of modality - of the notions of possibility, actuality, and necessity. Abaci argues that Kant redefined these notions as ways in which our representations of objects are related to our cognitive faculty and thus as irreducibly subjective, relational, and conceptual.

This book collects original essays on the epistemology of modality and related issues in modal metaphysics and philosophical methodology. The contributors utilize both the newer "metaphysics-first" and the more traditional "epistemology-first" approaches to these issues. The chapters on modal epistemology mostly focus on the problem of how we can gain knowledge of possibilities, which have never been actualized, or necessities which are not provable either by logico-mathematical reasoning or by linguistic competence alone. These issues are closely related to some of the central issues in philosophical methodology, notably: to what extent is the armchair methodology of philosophy a reliable guide for the formation of beliefs about what is possible and necessary. This question also relates to the nature of thought experiments that are extensively used in science and philosophy. Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the epistemology and metaphysics of modality, as well as those whose work is concerned with philosophical methodology more generally.

Intro -- MIND AND MODALITY -- Copyright -- Contents -- PART I ANCIENT THOUGHT -- The "Morality of Pity": Sophocles' Philoctetes and the European Stoics -- Aristotle's Desire -- Ta Meta Ta Metaphysika: The Argumentative Structure of Aristotle's Metaphysics. -- Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Active Intellect -- Plotinus on Thinking Oneself and the First-Person -- The Autonomy of Religion in Ancient Philosophy -- PART II MEDIEVAL THOUGHT -- Future Contingents in the Eleventh Century -- Mind and Modal Judgement: Al-Ghaz¯al¯ı and Ibn Rushd on Conceivability and Possibility -- By Necessity -- Types of Self-Awareness in Medieval Thought -- Mental Disorders in Late Medieval Philosophy and Theology -- Wisdom as Intellectual Virtue: Aquinas, Odonis and Buridan -- John Buridan and the Mathematical Demonstration* -- What is Singular Thought? Ockham and Buridan on Singular Terms in the Language of Thought -- Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy: Luther and the Medieval De Anima Tradition of Imagination. -- PART III MODERN THOUGHT -- Necessity, Immutability, and Descartes -- Spinoza and Hume on Pride and Self-Knowledge -- The Community of Minds as a Problem of Modern Philosophy: Descartes, Leibniz, Kant -- Varieties of Philosophical Theology Before and After Kant -- Symbol Meaning and Logical Form: A Study in the Semantics of Religious Language -- Cognition and Emotion -- Index of Names.

Nicholas F. Stang explores Kant's theory of possibility, from the precritical period of the 1750-60s to the Critical system initiated by the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. He argues that the key to understanding the relationship between these periods lies in Kant's reorientation of an ontological question towards a transcendental approach.

This series assembles high-quality volumes from different domains of analytical philosophy. Here, "analytical philosophy" is broadly conceived in terms of a common methodological orientation towards clear formulation and sound argumentation; it is not defined by any philosophical position or school of thought. The series is edited on behalf of the Lauener Foundation for Analytical Philosophy.

Jonathan Bennett engages with the thought of six great thinkers of the early modern period: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. While not neglecting the historical setting of each, his chief focus is on the words they wrote. What problem is being tackled? How exactly is the solution meant to work? Does it succeed? If not, why not? What can be learned from its success or failure? For newcomers to the early modern scene, this clearly written work isan excellent introduction to it. Those already in the know can learn how to argue with the great philosophers of the past, treating them as colleagues, antagonists, students, teachers. In this second volume, Bennett focuses on the work of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.

Seemingly safe on the surface, sunny Singapore has seen its fair share of murders that run the gamut from pre-mediated cases to crimes of passion. Here are some cases from the archives. Read about the curry murders where the victim's body was dismembered and cooked in curry and then disposed of. Then there was the maid who stabbed her employer and yet another who killed her employer's child. But maids have also fallen prey and one domestic worker was herself murdered and dumped into a rooftop water tank

Abstract
In this paper, I attempt to explain one of the most controversial views attributed to the Stoic Chrysippus: that the impossible can follow from the possible. My solution finds in Chrysippus a distinction later made by the medieval logician John Buridan: that between being
possible (there being a state of affairs that may occur) and being
possibly-true (there being some proposition whose truth-conditions are that state of affairs). Buridan and Chrysippus have radically opposing views on the nature of propositions. What their conceptions share is the conclusion that at least some propositions must be contingent beings. They argue for this while maintaining a rigorous commitment to the view that propositions are strictly bivalent. In 2. I explain the Chrysippean passage in terms of a distinction Buridan makes explicitly. In 3. I show how the distinction follows implicitly from the Stoic theory of quantification. In 4. I compare the modality with other aspects of Stoic logic. In 5. I discuss how the distinction behaves in the future tense.

AbstractKit Fine (Philos Perspect 8:1–16, 1994) famously objected against the idea that essence can be successfully analyzed in terms ofde renecessity. In response, I want to explore a novel, interesting, but controversial modal account of essence in terms ofintrinsicalityandgrounding. In the first section, I will single out two theoretical requirements that any essentialist theory should meet—theessentialist desideratumand theessentialist challenge—in order to clarify Fine's objections. In the second section, I will assess Denby's improved modal account, which appeals to the notion of intrinsicality, and argue that it is untenable. In the third section, I will explain how, when combined with a modal-existential criterion, a hyperintensional account of intrinsicality—in the same vein as Bader (J Philos 110(10):525–563, 2013) and Rosen (in: Hale and Hoffman (eds) Modality: Metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, Oxford, OUP, 2010)—can help successfully address Fine's counterexamples. In the fourth section, I will evaluate how this novel analysis of essence stands with respect to sortal, origin, and natural kinds essentialism and discuss potential objections and difficulties.