Download or read book An Inquiry on Modal Metaphysical Puzzling Possible Worlds written by Valery Berthoud and published by Anchor Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of possible worlds is useful because it defines the four modalities – possibility, necessity, contingency, and impossibility – but a challenge lies in defining it. David Lewis’ polemical hypothesis (“genuine modal realism” as it is called) succeeds in it. Lewis’ modal realism stirred controversy because he maintains that a plurality of worlds exists. Some philosophers suggest that the Lewisian view is a violation to the law of parsimony, also known as Ockham’s Razor, i.e. not multiply entities beyond necessity. While avoiding a circular definition, Lewis constructs an inflated ontology. Is it worth it, and if we do not want to assume too many Lewisian worlds, what alternatives remain? Actualist modal realism and modal antirealism are the most relevant alternatives because modal abstentionism simply will not progress in this direction. This study evaluates the theories of possible worlds.
Download or read book An Inquiry on Modal Metaphysical Puzzling Possible Worlds written by Valery Berthoud and published by Anchor Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of possible worlds is useful because it defines the four modalities – possibility, necessity, contingency, and impossibility – but a challenge lies in defining it. David Lewis’ polemical hypothesis (“genuine modal realism” as it is called) succeeds in it. Lewis’ modal realism stirred controversy because he maintains that a plurality of worlds exists. Some philosophers suggest that the Lewisian view is a violation to the law of parsimony, also known as Ockham’s Razor, i.e. not multiply entities beyond necessity. While avoiding a circular definition, Lewis constructs an inflated ontology. Is it worth it, and if we do not want to assume too many Lewisian worlds, what alternatives remain? Actualist modal realism and modal antirealism are the most relevant alternatives because modal abstentionism simply will not progress in this direction. This study evaluates the theories of possible worlds.
Download or read book Possible Worlds written by Rod Girle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since Saul Kripke and others developed a semantic interpretation for modal logic, 'possible worlds' has been a much debated issue in contemporary metaphysics. To propose the idea of a possible world that differs in some way from our actual world - for example a world where the grass is red or where no people exist - can help us to analyse and understand a wide range of philosophical concepts, such as counterfactuals, properties, modality, and of course, the notions of possibility and necessity. This book examines the ways in which possible worlds have been used as a framework for considering problems in logic and argument analysis. The book begins with a non-technical introduction to the basic ideas of modal logic in terms of Kripke's possible worlds and then moves on to a discussion of 'possible for' and 'possible that'. The central chapters examine questions of meaning, epistemic possibility, temporal logic, metaphysics, and impossibility. Girle also investigates how the idea of a possible world can be put to use in different areas of philosophy, the problems it may raise, and the benefits that can be gained.
Download or read book Modality written by Bob Hale and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophy of modality investigates necessity and possibility, and related notions—are they objective features of mind-independent reality? If so, are they irreducible, or can modal facts be explained in other terms? This volume presents new work on modality by established leaders in the field and by up-and-coming philosophers. Between them, the papers address fundamental questions concerning realism and anti-realism about modality, the nature and basis of facts about what is possible and what is necessary, the nature of modal knowledge, modal logic and its relations to necessary existence and to counterfactual reasoning. The general introduction locates the individual contributions in the wider context of the contemporary discussion of the metaphysics and epistemology of modality.
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 Topics in the Philosophy of Possible Worlds written by Daniel Nolan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses a range of important issues in current philosophical work on the nature of possible worlds. Areas investigated include the theories of the nature of possible worlds, general questions about metaphysical analysis and questions about the direction of dependence between what is necessary or possible and what could be.
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 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 ...
Download or read book Worlds and Individuals Possible and Otherwise written by Takashi Yagisawa and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takashi Yagisawa argues for a new version of modal realism, the view that non-actual possible worlds and individuals are as real as the actual ones. He asserts that the notion of reality is primitive, existence is a relation between a thing and a domain, and ordinary objects are extended in spatial, temporal, and modal dimensions.
Download or read book Possible Worlds written by John Divers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-01-16 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Possible Worlds presents the first up-to-date and comprehensive examination of one of the most important topics in metaphysics. John Divers considers the prevalent philosophical positions, including realism, antirealism and the work of important writers on possible worlds such as David Lewis, evaluating them in detail.
Download or read book Possible Worlds and Modal Semantics written by Jianxin Wu and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Philosophy of Philosophy written by Timothy Williamson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The expanded new edition of one of the most influential and controversial books about the nature of philosophy published in the past several decades The Philosophy of Philosophy presents an original, unified concept of philosophy as a non-natural science. In this provocative work, distinguished philosopher Timothy Williamson challenges widely-held assumptions and clarifies long-standing misconceptions about the methodology and nature of philosophical inquiry. The author rejects the standard narratives of contemporary philosophy developed from naturalism, the linguistic turn, postmodern irony, and other prominent trends of the twentieth century. Viewing the method of philosophy as evolving from non-philosophical pursuits, Williamson provides readers with fresh insight into the “self-image” of philosophy and offers new ways of understanding what philosophy is and how it actually works. Now in its second edition, this landmark volume comprises the original book and the author’s subsequent work. New topics include the recent history of analytic philosophy, assessments of experimental philosophy, theories of concepts and understanding, Wittgensteinian approaches, popular philosophy, naturalism, morally-loaded examples in philosophy, philosophical applications of scientific methods, and many more. This edition features the author’s latest thoughts on a variety of issues, autobiographical reflections, and replies to critics. Proposes an alternative narrative about the nature of philosophy Argues that the common assumption of philosophical exceptionalism is false Highlights the similarities between philosophy and the other sciences in both methodology and subject matter Explores why contemporary philosophy has failed to articulate an adequate methodology Emphasizes increasing the methodological standards of reasoning in philosophy The Philosophy of Philosophy, Second Edition remains essential reading for philosophers, scholars, graduate and advanced undergraduate students in philosophy, and other readers with a sustained interest in the method and rationale of the doing of philosophy.
Download or read book Discourse on Metaphysics written by Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von Leibniz and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On the Plurality of Worlds written by David Lewis and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2001-02-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a defense of modal realism; the thesis that our world is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that the individuals that inhabit our world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds. Lewis argues that the philosophical utility of modal realism is a good reason for believing that it is true.
Download or read book Impossible Worlds written by Francesco Berto and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-06 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. We need to understand the impossible. Francesco Berto and Mark Jago start by considering what the concepts of meaning, information, knowledge, belief, fiction, conditionality, and counterfactual supposition have in common. They are all concepts which divide the world up more finely than logic does. Logically equivalent sentences may carry different meanings and information and may differ in how they're believed. Fictions can be inconsistent yet meaningful. We can suppose impossible things without collapsing into total incoherence. Yet for the leading philosophical theories of meaning, these phenomena are an unfathomable mystery. To understand these concepts, we need a metaphysical, logical, and conceptual grasp of situations that could not possibly exist: Impossible Worlds. This book discusses the metaphysics of impossible worlds and applies the concept to a range of central topics and open issues in logic, semantics, and philosophy. It considers problems in the logic of knowledge, the meaning of alternative logics, models of imagination and mental simulation, the theory of information, truth in fiction, the meaning of conditional statements, and reasoning about the impossible. In all these cases, impossible worlds have an essential role to play.
Download or read book Modal Matters written by Phillip Bricker and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing together his work from four decades, Phillip Bricker provides a comprehensive account of modal reality - the realm of possible worlds - from a Humean perspective, with excursions into neighboring topics in metaphysics. Many of the chapters in this volume focus on aspects of David Lewis's metaphysics and his defence of modal realism, sometimes further developing and defending Lewis's views, sometimes deviating from them in substantial ways. The volume is presented in four parts: part one sketches an account of reality as a whole, both the mathematical and the modal, defending a form of plenitudinous realism; part two presents and defends a realist theory of concrete possible worlds with an absolute ontological distinction between the actual and the merely possible; part three presents and defends a Humean account of modal plenitude, formulating and endorsing principles that guarantee a plenitude of recombination, of possible structures, and of alien contents; and part four applies the Humean account to truthmaking, mereology, spacetime, and quantities. An uncompromising Humean, Bricker shows that holding fast to Humean strictures leads to views that differ in radical ways from those prevalent among contemporary metaphysicians.
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.
