  Prior goes on in The Craft to defend his account of modality as quantification over possible states of affairs against various alternatives, for example the Andersonian account, according to which ‘Every table here is necessarily brown’ means ‘There is a property which every table here in fact possesses, and of which it is true that everything that possesses it is in fact brown’. John Anderson, Professor at the University of Sydney, was a leading figure in the development of philosophy in Australasia.