A sports reporter might say that in a competition all the participants realize their potentialities or possibilities. When an athlete performs far below his usual standard, it can be said that it was possible for him to do better. But the idea of fair play requires that this use of 'possible' refers to another com petition. It is presumed that the best athlete wins and that no real possibility of doing better is left unrealized in a competition. Here we have a use of language, a language game, in which modal notions are used so as to imply that if something is possible, it is realized. This...

The word "modem" in the title of this book refers primarily to post-medieval discussions, but it also hints at those medieval mo- dal theories which were considered modem in contradistinction to ancient conceptions and which in different ways influenced philosophical discussions during the early modem period. The me- dieval developments are investigated in the opening paper, 'The Foundations of Modality and Conceivability in Descartes and His Predecessors', by Lilli Alanen and Simo Knuuttila. Boethius's works from the early sixth century belonged to the sources from which early medieval...