Meta Ontology

Despite the wide acceptance of standard modal logic, there hasalways been a temptation to think that ordinary modal discourse maybe correctly analyzed and adequately represented in terms of predicatesrather than in terms of operators. The aim of the formal model outlinedin this paper is to capture what I take to be the only plausible sense inwhich `possible' and `necessary' can be treated as predicates. The modelis built by enriching the language of standard modal logic with a quantificationalapparatus that is ''substitutional'' rather than ''objectual'', andby obtaining from the language so enriched another language in whichconstants for such predicates apply to singular terms that stand for propositions.