A Purely Recombinatorial Puzzle

Abstract

A new puzzle of modal recombination is presented which relies purely on resources of first-order modal logic. It shows that naive recombinatorial reasoning, which has previously been shown to be inconsistent with various assumptions concerning propositions, sets and classes, leads to inconsistency by itself. The context sensitivity of modal expressions is suggested as the source of the puzzle, and it is argued that it gives us reason to reconsider the assumption that the notion of metaphysical necessity is in good standing. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: A Purely Recombinatorial Puzzle, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12172. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.