I investigate the modal commitments of various conceptions of the philosophy
of arithmetic potentialism. Specifically, I consider the natural potentialist
systems arising from the models of arithmetic under their natural extension
concepts, such as end-extensions, arbitrary extensions, conservative extensions
and more. In these potentialist systems, I show, the propositional modal
assertions that are valid with respect to all arithmetic assertions with
parameters are exactly the assertions of S4. With respect to sentences,
however, the validities of a model lie between S4 and S5, and these bounds are
sharp in that there are models realizing both endpoints. For a model of
arithmetic to validate S5 is precisely to fulfill the arithmetic maximality
principle, which asserts that every possibly necessary statement is already
true, and these models are equivalently characterized as those satisfying a
maximal Σ1​ theory. The main S4 analysis makes fundamental use of the
universal algorithm, of which this article provides a simplified,
self-contained account. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the
philosophical differences of several fundamentally different potentialist
attitudes---linear inevitability, convergent potentialism and radical branching
possibility---are expressed by their corresponding potentialist modal
validities.Comment: 38 pages. Inquiries and commentary can be made at
http://jdh.hamkins.org/arithmetic-potentialism-and-the-universal-algorithm.
Version v3 has further minor revisions, including additional reference