Modern and Medieval Modal Spaces

Abstract

The interesting question about modality is not about its extension, but about its point. Everyone can agree (for instance) that the past is necessary in the Ockhamist sense but not in some ‘modern’ senses, and that the present is necessary in the Ockhamist sense but not in the Scotist sense. But why should it matter? These comments on Pasnau (2020) first set out a simple-minded explication in modern terms of some of these fourteenth-century ideas. Then I take issue with (a) Pasnau’s claim that the necessity of the past has something to do with the structure of ‘narrative history’, and (b) Duns Scotus’s claim that the contingency of the present has something to do with human freedom.