Modal Predicates

Abstract

Despite the wide acceptance of standard modal logic, there has always been a temptation to think that ordinary modal discourse may be correctly analyzed and adequately represented in terms of predicates rather than in terms of operators. The aim of the formal model outlined in this paper is to capture what I take to be the only plausible sense in which ‘possible’ and ‘necessary’ can be treated as predicates. The model is built by enriching the language of standard modal logic with a quantificational apparatus that is “substitutional” rather than “objectual”, and by obtaining from the language so enriched another language in which constants for such predicates apply to singular terms that stand for propositions.