The central methodological advantage that analytic philosophy enjoys over all other forms of philosophy, past and present, is the rigorous framework of formal logic within which it can conduct its inquiries. Although different systems of logic are needed for different branches of philosophical inquiry, in the core area of metaphysics and surrounding fields for the past forty years the most natural and fruitful setting for inquiry has been quantified modal logic, in which we not only have the resources of first-order logic with identity but can also raise explicit questions of possibility and necessity with elegantly perspicuous generality.
