Perplexed comments on Less Wrong Rationality and Mainstream Philosophy - Less Wrong

106 Post author: lukeprog 20 March 2011 08:28PM

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Comment author: lukeprog 21 March 2011 11:35:45PM 7 points [-]

Reading Plantinga could poison almost anybody's opinion of modal logic. :)

Comment author: Perplexed 21 March 2011 11:50:37PM 3 points [-]

That is entirely possible. A five star review at the Amazon link you provided calls this "The classic work on the metaphysics of modality". Another review there says:

Plantinga's Nature of Necessity is a philosophical masterpiece. Although there are a number of good books in analytic philosophy dealing with modality (the concepts of necessity and possibility), this one is of sufficient clarity and breadth that even non-philosophers will benefit from it. Modal logic may seem like a fairly arcane subject to outsiders, but this book exhibits both its intrinsic interest and its general importance.

Yet among the literally thousands of references in the three books I linked, Platinga is not even mentioned. A fact which pretty much demonstrates that modal logic has left mainstream philosophy behind. Modal logic (in the sense I am promoting) is a branch of logic, not a branch of metaphysics.