Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective mathematics Of, pertaining to or derived using possibility.
  • adjective philosophy Of or pertaining to the philosophy of possibilism.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word possibilistic.

Examples

  • Contrary to initial appearance, then, the naïve minimalization accounts found in most existing analyses of donkey sentences within a possibilistic situation semantics are close to correct (but see section 9 for discussion of another potentially problematic case, example (61)).

    Situations in Natural Language Semantics Kratzer, Angelika 2009

  • They also share a "possibilistic approach," recognizing the capacity for the Global South to engage in transformative projects of emancipation.

    Watson Institute for International Studies News 2010

  • We will probably have quite a clue in that case, but we will need to remain possibilistic until at least a third, possibly more precise, measurement is performed by an independent experiment.

    A Quantum Diaries Survivor 2009

  • Or you might have some other account of the functioning of talk about possible worlds: Nolt 1986 suggests we should take typical “possibilistic discourse” to be a game of make-believe (Nolt 1986, p. 440), and while Nolt does not tell us specifically what theory of make-believe he has in mind, there are many theories of make-believe (most famously Walton 1990) that might be employed by a modal fictionalist to explain the behaviour of our typical utterances about possible worlds.

    Modal Fictionalism Nolan, Daniel 2007

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.