David Lewis Modal Realism
- Created by: A. Person
- Created on: 16-05-17 16:15
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- David Lewis: Concrete Modal Realism
- Quantification
- Restricted
- Quantify only over actual world.
- From this POV only this-wordly things exist.
- compare: all the beer is in the fridge.
- Unrestricted
- Quantify over all possible worlds.
- Modality = possibly there are blue swans iff for some world w, at w there are blue swans.
- at w = restricts domain of quantification.
- Restricted
- Objections to Lewis
- 1. Misrepresents his own position.
- Incorrect to say that our world is actual and others not.
- Actualism: everything is actual. A trivial truth.
- Other worlds just more of actuality
- Nothing to do w/ possibility - possibilities are not actual!
- Lewis Replies that he is not using 'actual' as a blanket term.
- Indexical
- Incorrect to say that our world is actual and others not.
- All Worlds in One?
- Premises about possibility map classes of worlds onto a single world.
- Unrestricted principle of recombination.
- Can patch together parts of worlds; world copies a class of individuals iff contains non overlapping duplicates!
- So will have one giant world w/ all worlds.
- Including this world?
- World bigger than itself/regress?
- Including this world?
- So will have one giant world w/ all worlds.
- Can patch together parts of worlds; world copies a class of individuals iff contains non overlapping duplicates!
- Unrestricted principle of recombination.
- Premises about possibility map classes of worlds onto a single world.
- How can we know?
- Richards: poss world truth conditions cannot tell us whether they are met.
- so cannot know if there's a world with a given possibility!
- Donkey response
- knowledge of a donkey = contingent. Visual stimulation etc.
- Knowledge of possible donkey = necessary.
- Demarcation not of concrete/abstract, but of contingent/necessary...
- Richards: poss world truth conditions cannot tell us whether they are met.
- Indifference
- Adams: CMR cannot say why we should care about actualising evils, if they will occur anyway...
- Prudential variant: why bother writing a book, or continuing to live...
- b/c egocentric concern!
- Futile to want whole system of words to be a certain way, but not our own world!!
- b/c egocentric concern!
- 1. Misrepresents his own position.
- Quantification
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