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Inverse View
It is not the case that Possibilism, defended by Kripke and others, holds that merely possible and future entities have genuine ontological status as possible objects.
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Reasons For
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Reason for
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1.
Possibilism inflates ontology without empirical evidence; Occam's Razor favors analyzing modality through actual-world linguistic conventions.
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2.
If merely possible objects exist, their properties become indeterminate; we cannot specify how many possible cats have exactly seven whiskers.
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3.
Actualism explains counterfactuals equally well via abstract propositions or fictional frameworks, avoiding commitment to impossible entities.
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Reasons Against
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Reason against
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1.
Counterfactual statements about non-actual scenarios require truth-makers; possible objects provide the needed ontological ground.
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2.
Modal logic's formal validity across systems suggests possible worlds and objects have genuine structure, not mere conceptual convenience.
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3.
We meaningfully quantify over possibilities in science and mathematics; ontological commitment to possibilia best explains this practice.
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