Modality was crucial to the revival of metaphysics in the 20th century. After a long period of domination by anti-metaphysical outlooks like positivism and pragmatism, groundbreaking work on modality, by Saul Kripke, David Lewis, and others, brought metaphysics back into focus. Possible worlds were their key to such modal notions as necessity, possibility, counterfactuals, dispositions, and supervenience, which still pervade philosophical inquiry today. What has changed, however, is that we no longer trust possible worlds as a guide for the metaphysics of modality. The currently most popular view on the metaphysics of modality is hyperintensionalism, the view that necessity and possibility derive from more fine-grained phenomena like essences, laws, and logic. Focusing on so-called “metaphysical necessity”, the most popular view among modal metaphysicians today is that it is grounded in…
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