Ontology Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Modality === [[Modal logic|Modality]] concerns the concepts of possibility, actuality, and necessity. In contemporary discourse, these concepts are often defined in terms of [[possible worlds]].<ref name="Sandkühler2"/> A possible world is a complete way how things could have been.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Vander Laan |first=David A. |date=1997 |title=The Ontology of Impossible Worlds |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/VANTOO |journal=Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic |volume=38 |issue=4 |pages=597–620 |doi=10.1305/ndjfl/1039540772 |doi-access=free}}</ref> The actual world is one possible world among others: things could have been different from what they actually are. A proposition is possibly true if there is at least one possible world in which it is true; it is necessarily true if it is true in all possible worlds.<ref>{{cite web |last=Menzel |first=Christopher |title=Possible Worlds |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/possible-worlds/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=5 January 2021 |date=2017}}</ref> ''[[Actualism|Actualists]]'' and ''possibilists'' disagree on the ''ontological status'' of possible worlds.<ref name="Sandkühler2"/> Actualists hold that reality is at its core actual and that possible worlds should be understood in terms of actual entities, for example, as fictions or as sets of sentences.<ref name="Parent">{{cite web |last=Parent |first=Ted |title=Modal Metaphysics |url=https://iep.utm.edu/mod-meta/ |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=5 January 2021}}</ref> Possibilists, on the other hand, assign to possible worlds the same ''fundamental ontological status'' as to the actual world. This is a form of [[modal realism]], holding that reality has ''irreducibly modal features''.<ref name="Parent"/> Another important issue in this field concerns the distinction between ''contingent'' and ''necessary beings''.<ref name="Sandkühler2"/> Contingent beings are beings whose existence is possible but not necessary. Necessary beings, on the other hand, could not have failed to exist.<ref>{{cite web |last=Davidson |first=Matthew |title=God and Other Necessary Beings |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/god-necessary-being/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=5 January 2021 |date=2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Reichenbach |first=Bruce |title=Cosmological Argument |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=6 January 2021 |date=2019}}</ref> It has been suggested that this distinction is the highest division of being.<ref name="Sandkühler2"/><ref>{{cite web |title=Contingent |url=https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04331a.htm |website=newadvent.org |publisher=CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA |access-date=5 January 2021}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page