Download or read book Actuality Possibility and Worlds written by Alexander R. Pruss and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-05-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Actuality, Possibility and Worlds is an exploration of the Aristotelian account that sees possibilities as grounded in causal powers. On his way to that account, Pruss surveys a number of historical approaches and argues that logicist approaches to possibility are implausible. The notion of possible worlds appears to be useful for many purposes, such as the analysis of counterfactuals or elucidating the nature of propositions and properties. This usefulness of possible worlds makes for a second general question: Are there any possible worlds and, if so, what are they? Are they concrete universes as David Lewis thinks, Platonic abstracta as per Robert M. Adams and Alvin Plantinga, or maybe linguistic or mathematical constructs such as Heller thinks? Or is perhaps Leibniz right in thinking that possibilia are not on par with actualities and that abstracta can only exist in a mind, so that possible worlds are ideas in the mind of God?
Download or read book Leibniz on Compossibility and Possible Worlds written by Gregory Brown and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-27 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a number of original articles by leading Leibniz scholars to address the meaning and significance of Leibniz’s notions of compossibility and possible worlds. In order to avoid the conclusion that everything that exists is necessary, or that all possibles are actual, as Spinoza held, Leibniz argued that not all possible substances are compossible, that is, capable of coexisting. In Leibniz’s view, the compossibility relation divides all possible substances into disjoint sets, each of which constitutes a possible world, or a way that God might have created things. For Leibniz, then, it is the compossibility relation that individuates possible worlds; and possible worlds form the objects of God’s choice, from among which he chooses the best for creation. Thus the notions of compossibility and possible worlds are of major significance for Leibniz’s metaphysics, his theodicy, and, ultimately, for his ethics. Given the fact, however, that none of the approaches to understanding Leibniz’s notions of compossibility and possible words suggested to date have gained universal acceptance, the goal of this book is to gather a body of new papers that explore ways of either refining previous interpretations in light of the objections that have been raised against them, or ways of framing new interpretations that will contribute to a fresh understanding of these key notions in Leibniz’s thought.
Download or read book Possible Worlds written by Raymond Bradley and published by Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing Company. This book was released on 1979-01-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sermons by a noted German theologian discuss what the Bible says about freedom, political power, fear, unity, and human rights
Download or read book The Nature of Contingency written by Alastair Wilson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing possibility, necessity, actuality, chance, counterfactuals, and a host of related modal notions. Rationalist metaphysicians argue that the metaphysics of modality is strictly prior to any scientific investigation; metaphysics establishes which worlds are possible, and physics merely checks which of these worlds is actual. Naturalistic metaphysicians respond that science may discover new possibilities and new impossibilities. This book's quantum theory of contingency takes naturalistic metaphysics one step further, allowing that science may discover what it is to be possible. As electromagnetism revealed the nature of light, as acoustics revealed the nature of sound, as statistical mechanics revealed the nature of heat, so quantum physics reveals the nature of contingency.
Download or read book A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility written by D. M. Armstrong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-09-29 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preface Part I. Non-Naturalist Theories of Possibility: 1. Causal argument 2. Non-Naturalist theories of possibility Part II. A Combinatorial and Naturalist Account of Possibility: 3. Possibility in a simple world 4. Expanding and contracting the world 5. Relative atoms 6. Are there de re incompatibilities and necessities? 7. Higher-order entities, negation and causation 8. Supervenience 9. Mathematics 10. Final questions: logic Works cited Appendix: Tractarian Nominalism Brian Skyrms Index.
Download or read book Mere Possibilities written by Robert Stalnaker and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-08 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It seems reasonable to believe that there might have existed things other than those that in fact exist, or have existed. But how should we understand such claims? Standard semantic theories exploit the Leibnizian metaphor of a set of all possible worlds: a proposition might or must be true if it is true in some or all possible worlds. The actualist, who believes that nothing exists except what actually exists, prefers to talk of possible states of the world, or of ways that a world might be. But even the actualist still faces the problem of explaining what we are talking about when we talk about the domains of other possible worlds. In Mere Possibilities, Robert Stalnaker develops a framework for clarifying this problem, and explores a number of actualist strategies for solving it. Some philosophers have hypothesized a realm of individual essences that stand as proxies for all merely possible beings. Others have argued that we are committed to the necessary existence of everything that does or might exist. In contrast, Mere Possibilities shows how we can make sense of ordinary beliefs about what might and must exist without making counterintuitive metaphysical commitments. The book also sheds new light on the nature of metaphysical theorizing by exploring the interaction of semantic and metaphysical issues, the connections between different metaphysical issues, and the nature of ontological commitment.
Download or read book The Actual and the Possible written by Mark Sinclair and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Actual and the Possible presents new essays by leading specialists on modality and the metaphysics of modality in the history of modern philosophy from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. It revisits key moments in the history of modern modal doctrines, and illuminates lesser-known moments of that history. The ultimate purpose of this historical approach is to contextualise and even to offer some alternatives to dominant positions within the contemporary philosophy of modality. Hence the volume contains not only new scholarship on the early-modern doctrines of Baruch Spinoza, G. W. F. Leibniz, Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant, but also work relating to less familiar nineteenth-century thinkers such as Alexius Meinong and Jan Lukasiewicz, together with essays on celebrated nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers such as G. W. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger and Bertrand Russell, whose modal doctrines have not previously garnered the attention they deserve. The volume thus covers a variety of traditions, and its historical range extends to the end of the twentieth century, addressing the legacy of W. V. Quine's critique of modality within recent analytic philosophy.
Download or read book Possible Worlds written by Rod Girle and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2003 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Worlds of Possibility written by Charles S. Chihara and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modal realism is the philosophical doctrine that there exist many possible worlds, of which the actual world is just one. This volume offers a critical exposition of the theory.
Download or read book Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality written by Alvin Plantinga and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-27 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps no one has done more in the last 30 years to advance thinking in the metaphysics of modality than has Alvin Plantinga. Collected here are some of his most important essays on this influential subject. Dating back from the late 1960's to the present, they chronicle the development of Plantinga's thoughts about some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics: what is the nature of abstract objects like possible worlds, properties, propositions, and such phenomena? Are there possible but non-actual objects? Can objects that do not exist exemplify properties? Plantinga gives thorough and penetrating answers to all of these questions and many others. This volume contains some of the best work in metaphysics from the past 30 years, and will remain a source of critical contention and keen interest among philosophers of metaphysics and philosophical logic for years to come.
Download or read book On Possibility and Possible Worlds written by Tony Daniel Roy and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Possible Worlds written by Rod Girle and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2003 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plausible Worlds written by Geoffrey Hawthorn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-11-18 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examples through history used to examine the role of possible worlds in explanation and practical judgements.
Download or read book Alvin Plantinga written by H. Tomberlin and published by Springer. This book was released on 1985-09-30 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this series is to inform both professional philosophers and a larger readership (of social and natural scientists, methodologists, mathematicians, students, teachers, publishers, etc.) about what is going on, who's who, and who does what in contemporary philosophy and logic. PROFILES is designed to present the research activity and the results of already outstanding personalities and schools and of newly emerging ones in the various fields of philosophy and logic. There are many Festschrift volumes dedicated to various philosophers. There is the celebrated Library of Living Philosophers edited by P. A. Schilpp whose format influenced the present enterprise. Still they can only cover very little of the contemporary philosophical scene. Faced with a tremendous expansion of philosophical information and with an almost frightening division of labor and increasing specialization we need systematic and regular ways of keeping track of what happens in the profession. PROFILES is intended to perform such a function. Each volume is devoted to one or several philosophers whose views and results are presented and discussed. The profiled philosopher(s) will summarize and review his (their) own work in the main fields of significant contribution. This work will be discussed and evaluated by invited contributors. Relevant historical and/or biographical data, an up-to-date bibliography with short abstracts of the most important works and, whenever possible, references to significant reviews and discussions will also be included.
Download or read book Modal Logic as Metaphysics written by Timothy Williamson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timothy Williamson gives an original and provocative treatment of deep metaphysical questions about existence, contingency, and change, using the latest resources of quantified modal logic. Contrary to the widespread assumption that logic and metaphysics are disjoint, he argues that modal logic provides a structural core for metaphysics.
Download or read book Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds written by M. de Fontenelle (Bernard Le Bovier) and published by . This book was released on 1803 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Impossible Worlds written by Francesco Berto and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latter half of the 20 ...
