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Possible worlds

Noûs 10 (1):65-75 (1976)

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  1. A Referential Theory of Truth and Falsity.İlhan İnan - 2022 - New York, NY, USA: Routledge.
    This book proposes a novel theory of truth and falsity. It argues that truth is a form of reference and falsity is a form of reference failure. -/- Most of the philosophical literature on truth concentrates on certain ontological and epistemic problems. This book focuses instead on language. By utilizing the Fregean idea that sentences are singular referring expressions, the author develops novel connections between the philosophical study of truth and falsity and the huge literature in in the philosophy of (...)
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  • A representationalist reading of Kantian intuitions.Ayoob Shahmoradi - 2021 - Synthese 198 (3):2169-2191.
    There are passages in Kant’s writings according to which empirical intuitions have to be (a) singular, (b) object-dependent, and (c) immediate. It has also been argued that empirical intuitions (d) are not truth-apt, and (e) need to provide the subject with a proof of the possibility of the cognized object. Having relied on one or another of the a-e constraints, the naïve realist readers of Kant have argued that it is not possible for empirical intuitions to be representations. Instead they (...)
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  • Idle Questions.Jens Kipper, Alexander W. Kocurek & Zeynep Soysal - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy.
    In light of the problem of logical omniscience, some scholars have argued that belief is question-sensitive: agents don't simply believe propositions but rather believe answers to questions. Hoek (2022) has recently developed a version of this approach on which a belief state is a "web" of questions and answers. Here, we present several challenges to Hoek's question-sensitive account of belief. First, Hoek's account is prone to very similar logical omniscience problems as those he claims to address. Second, the link between (...)
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  • The Logic of Hyperlogic. Part B: Extensions and Restrictions.Alexander W. Kocurek - 2022 - Review of Symbolic Logic:1-28.
    This is the second part of a two-part series on the logic of hyperlogic, a formal system for regimenting metalogical claims in the object language (even within embedded environments). Part A provided a minimal logic for hyperlogic that is sound and complete over the class of all models. In this part, we extend these completeness results to stronger logics that are sound and complete over restricted classes of models. We also investigate the logic of hyperlogic when the language is enriched (...)
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  • Escenarios contrafácticos. Una reflexión sobre la Teoría institucional del arte.Adrià Harillo Pla - 2024 - Perseitas 12:273-285.
    Siguiendo la definición de Osvaldo Pessoa Jr., un “escenario contrafáctico” sería “una situación posible que no se realizó, como una posibilidad futura en algún instante del pasado”. Este concepto no es nuevo. De hecho, tiene una presencia significativa en campos como la filosofía analítica, la economía, las ciencias experimentales o la psicología. La pretensión de este texto es presentar, mediante el rigor teórico, conceptual, y el método inductivo, una reflexión no derivada de investigación. Esta reflexión es la importancia de la (...)
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  • Normative Properties.Allan Gibbard - 2003 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1):141-157.
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  • Two Axes of Actualism.Karen Bennett - 2005 - Philosophical Review 114 (3):297-326.
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  • Bring back the magic.Kevin Zaragoza - 2007 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (3):391-402.
    Magical ersatzism is the view that possible worlds are primitive abstract entities. In On the Plurality of Worlds, David Lewis presented what appeared to many to be a devastating argument against magical ersatzism. In this paper, I show that Lewis’ central argument does not succeed. Magical ersatzism remains a viable theory of possible worlds.
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  • Twenty-five basic theorems in situation and world theory.Edward N. Zalta - 1993 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 22 (4):385-428.
    The foregoing set of theorems forms an effective foundation for the theory of situations and worlds. All twenty-five theorems seem to be basic, reasonable principles that structure the domains of properties, relations, states of affairs, situations, and worlds in true and philosophically interesting ways. They resolve 15 of the 19 choice points defined in Barwise (1989) (see Notes 22, 27, 31, 32, 35, 36, 39, 43, and 45). Moreover, important axioms and principles stipulated by situation theorists are derived (see Notes (...)
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  • On the structural similarities between worlds and times.Edward N. Zalta - 1987 - Philosophical Studies 51 (2):213-239.
    In the debate about the nature and identity of possible worlds, philosophers have neglected the parallel questions about the nature and identity of moments of time. These are not questions about the structure of time in general, but rather about the internal structure of each individual time. Times and worlds share the following structural similarities: both are maximal with respect to propositions (at every world and time, either p or p is true, for every p); both are consistent; both are (...)
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  • On time and actuality: The dilemma of privileged position.Palle Yourgrau - 1986 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (4):405-417.
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  • Primitive worlds.Takashi Yagisawa - 2002 - Acta Analytica 17 (1):19-37.
    Modal Dimensionalism is a metaphysical theory about possible worlds that is naturally suggested by the often-noted parallelism between modal logic and tense logic. It says that the universe spreads out not only in spatiotemporal dimensions but also in a modal dimension. It regards worlds as nothing more or less than indices in the modal dimension in the way analogous to the way in which Temporal Dimensionalism regards temporal points and intervals as indices in the temporal dimension. Despite its naturalness and (...)
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  • Possible worlds as shifting domains.Takashi Yagisawa - 1992 - Erkenntnis 36 (1):83 - 101.
    Those who object to David Lewis' modal realism express qualms about philosophical respectability of the Lewisian notion of a possible world and its correlate notion of an inhabitant of a possible world. The resulting impression is that these two notions either stand together or fall together. I argue that the Lewisian notion of a possible world is otiose even for a good Lewisian modal realist, and that one can carry out a good Lewisian semantics for modal discourse without Lewisian possible (...)
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  • How in the world?Stephen Yablo - 1996 - In Christopher Hill (ed.), Philosophical Topics. University of Arkansas Press. pp. 255--86.
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  • Counterparts.Richard Woodward - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (1):58-70.
    Possible worlds represent you as being certain ways, as having a different lives, different hopes, and different friends. A foundational question in the philosophy of modality thus emerges: in virtue of what does a world represent you in these ways? In this paper, we focus on David Lewis's answer to this metarepresentational question: Counterpart Theory.
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  • An integrative design? How liberalised modal empiricism fails the integration challenge.Ylwa Sjölin Wirling - 2019 - Synthese 198 (6):5655-5673.
    The idea that justified modal belief can be accounted for in terms of empirically justified, non-modal belief is enjoying increasing popularity in the epistemology of modality. One alleged reason to prefer modal empiricism over more traditional, rationalist modal epistemologies is that empiricism avoids the problem with the integration challenge that arise for rationalism, assuming that we want to be realists about modal metaphysics. In this paper, I argue that given two very reasonable constraints on what it means to meet the (...)
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  • Propositions for Semantics and Propositions for Epistemology.N. L. Wilson - 1984 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (3):375 - 399.
    The title is an allusion to the fact that, traditionally, propositions have served at least two distinct functions in philosophy, even though these functions have not usually been distinguished. Propositions have been invoked as the ‘meanings’ or ‘intensions’ of sentences and as the objects of propositional attitudes. Thus the proposition that Socrates is wise is the meaning of the English sentence, ‘Socrates is wise,’ and is what Charles believes when he believes that Socrates is wise. ‘Means that’ and ‘believes that’ (...)
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  • The Problem of Index-Initialisation in the Tempo-Modal Semantics.Jacek Wawer - 2019 - Studia Semiotyczne—English Supplement 30:21-41.
    In Kripke-semantics for modal logic, the truth value of a sentence depends on the choice of a semantic index. It means that application of such semantics to natural language analysis requires indication of an index relevant for semantic analysis. It is commonly accepted that the relevant index is initialised by the context of an utterance. The idea has been rejected by the semanticists investigating tempo-modal languages in the framework of indeterminism, which generated the problem of initialization of the semantic index. (...)
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  • The Truth About the Future.Jacek Wawer - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (S3):365-401.
    There is a long-standing disagreement among Branching-Time theorists. Even though they all believe that the branching representation accurately grasps the idea that the future, contrary to the past, is open, they argue whether this representation is compatible with the claim that one among many possible futures is distinguished—the single future that will come to be. This disagreement is paralleled in an argument about the bivalence of future contingents. The single, privileged future is often called the Thin Red Line. I reconstruct (...)
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  • Modal Semantics without Worlds.Craig Warmke - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (11):702-715.
    Over the last half century, possible worlds have bled into almost every area of philosophy. In the metaphysics of modality, for example, philosophers have used possible worlds almost exclusively to illuminate discourse about metaphysical necessity and possibility. But recently, some have grown dissatisfied with possible worlds. Why are horses necessarily mammals? Because the property of being a horse bears a special relationship to the property of being a mammal, they say. Not because every horse is a mammal in every possible (...)
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  • The epistemological objection to modal primitivism.Jennifer Wang - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 8):1887-1898.
    Modal primitivists hold that some modal truths are primitively true. They thus seem to face a special epistemological problem: how can primitive modal truths be known? The epistemological objection has not been adequately developed in the literature. I undertake to develop the objection, and then to argue that the best formulation of the epistemological objection targets all realists about modality, rather than the primitivist alone. Furthermore, the moves available to reductionists in response to the objection are also available to primitivists. (...)
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  • Some consequences of possibilism.Russell Wahl - 1987 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 65 (4):427 – 433.
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  • An Interpretation of McCall’s “Real Possible Worlds” and His Semantics for Counterfactuals.Alexandru Dragomir - 2016 - Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 3 (1):65-78.
    McCall (1984) offered a semantics of counterfactual conditionals based on “real possible worlds” that avoids using the vague notion of similarity between possible worlds. I will propose an interpretation of McCall’s counterfactuals in a formal framework based on Baltag-Moss-Solecki events and protocols. Moreover, I will argue that using this interpretation one can avoid an objection raised by Otte (1987).
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  • A Hyperintensional Logic of Non-prime Evidence.Pietro Vigiani - 2024 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 53 (3):761-788.
    We present a logic of evidence that reduces agents’ epistemic idealisations by combining classical propositional logic with substructural modal logic for formulas in the scope of epistemic modalities. To this aim, we provide a neighborhood semantics of evidence, which provides a modal extension of Fine’s semantics for relevant propositional logic. Possible worlds semantics for classical propositional logic is then obtained by defining the set of possible worlds as a special subset of information states in Fine’s semantics. Finally, we prove that (...)
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  • Trading Ontology for Ideology.Martin Vacek - 2020 - Acta Analytica 35 (3):405-420.
    In this paper, I defend modal dimensionalism against the objection that it is ontologically and ideologically heavy. First, I briefly outline the theory and the objection against it. The objection relies on the widely accepted view that ontological and ideological parsimony are operational criteria when comparing metaphysical theories. Second, I outline the conventional distinction between ontology and ideology in the metaphysical tradition. Third, I challenge a particular kind of parsimony: reduction by identification. Fourth, even if reduction by identification is accepted, (...)
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  • A neglected resolution of Russell’s paradox of propositions.Gabriel Uzquiano - 2015 - Review of Symbolic Logic 8 (2):328-344.
    Bertrand Russell offered an influential paradox of propositions in Appendix B of The Principles of Mathematics, but there is little agreement as to what to conclude from it. We suggest that Russell's paradox is best regarded as a limitative result on propositional granularity. Some propositions are, on pain of contradiction, unable to discriminate between classes with different members: whatever they predicate of one, they predicate of the other. When accepted, this remarkable fact should cast some doubt upon some of the (...)
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  • Modality and Paradox.Gabriel Uzquiano - 2015 - Philosophy Compass 10 (4):284-300.
    Philosophers often explain what could be the case in terms of what is, in fact, the case at one possible world or another. They may differ in what they take possible worlds to be or in their gloss of what is for something to be the case at a possible world. Still, they stand united by the threat of paradox. A family of paradoxes akin to the set-theoretic antinomies seem to allow one to derive a contradiction from apparently plausible principles. (...)
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  • Norms and Negation: A Problem for Gibbard’s Logic.Nicholas Unwin - 2001 - Philosophical Quarterly 51 (202):60-75.
    A difficulty is exposed in Allan Gibbard's solution to the embedding/Frege-Geach problem, namely that the difference between refusing to accept a normative judgement and accepting its negation is ignored. This is shown to undermine the whole solution.
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  • Confusion is Corruptive Belief in False Identity.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (2):204-227.
    Speakers are confused about identity if they mistake one thing for two or two things for one. I present two plausible models of confusion, the Frege model and the Millikan model. I show how a prominent objection to Fregean models fails and argue that confusion consists in having false implicit beliefs involving the identity relation. Further, I argue that confused identity has characteristic corruptive effects on singular cognition and on the proper function of singular terms in linguistic communication.
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  • Actualism or possibilism?James E. Tomberlin - 1996 - Philosophical Studies 84 (2-3):263 - 281.
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  • Pleonastic possible worlds.Alexander Steinberg - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (3):767-789.
    The role of possible worlds in philosophy is hard to overestimate. Nevertheless, their nature and existence is very controversial. This is particularly serious, since their standard applications depend on there being sufficiently many of them. The paper develops an account of possible worlds on which it is particularly easy to believe in their existence: an account of possible worlds as pleonastic entities. Pleonastic entities are entities whose existence can be validly inferred from statements that neither refer to nor quantify over (...)
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  • Essence and Possibility in the Leibniz‐Arnauld Correspondence.Eric Stencil - 2016 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 97 (1):2-26.
    In the 1680s, Gottfried Leibniz and Antoine Arnauld engaged in a philosophically rich correspondence. One issue they discuss is modal metaphysics – questions concerning necessity, possibility, and essence. While Arnauld's contributions to the correspondence are considered generally astute, his contributions on this issue have not always received a warm treatment. I argue that Arnauld's criticisms of Leibniz are sophisticated and that Arnauld offers his own Cartesian account in its place. In particular, I argue that Arnauld offers an account of possibility (...)
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  • Proof-Theoretic Semantics and Inquisitive Logic.Will Stafford - 2021 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 50 (5):1199-1229.
    Prawitz conjectured that proof-theoretic validity offers a semantics for intuitionistic logic. This conjecture has recently been proven false by Piecha and Schroeder-Heister. This article resolves one of the questions left open by this recent result by showing the extensional alignment of proof-theoretic validity and general inquisitive logic. General inquisitive logic is a generalisation of inquisitive semantics, a uniform semantics for questions and assertions. The paper further defines a notion of quasi-proof-theoretic validity by restricting proof-theoretic validity to allow double negation elimination (...)
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  • Indexical belief.Robert C. Stalnaker - 1981 - Synthese 49 (1):129-151.
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  • Counterparts and identity.Robert Stalnaker - 1986 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11 (1):121--40.
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  • Counterparts and Identity.Robert Stalnaker - 1986 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11 (1):121-140.
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  • The Actual Future is Open.Giuseppe Spolaore & Francesco Gallina - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (1):99-119.
    Open futurism is the indeterministic position according to which the future is ‘open’, i.e., there is now no fact of the matter as to what future contingent events will actually obtain. Many open futurists hold a branching conception of time, in which a variety of possible futures exist. This paper introduces two challenges to branching-time open futurism, which are similar in spirit to a challenge posed by Fine to tense realism. The paper argues that, to address the new challenges, open (...)
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  • Actually.Scott Soames - 2007 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 81 (1):251-277.
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  • Actually.Scott Soames - 2007 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 81 (1):251-277.
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  • A ctuality: A ctually.Scott Soames - 2007 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 81 (1):251-277.
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  • Approximate truth and dynamical theories.Peter Smith - 1998 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (2):253-277.
    Arguably, there is no substantial, general answer to the question of what makes for the approximate truth of theories. But in one class of cases, the issue seems simply resolved. A wide class of applied dynamical theories can be treated as two-component theories—one component specifying a certain kind of abstract geometrical structure, the other giving empirical application to this structure by claiming that it replicates, subject to arbitrary scaling for units etc., the geometric structure to be found in some real-world (...)
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  • An Integrative Design? How liberalised modal empiricism fails the integration challenge.Ylwa Sjölin Wirling - 2021 - Synthese 198 (6):5655-5673.
    The idea that justified modal belief can be accounted for in terms of empirically justified, non-modal belief is enjoying increasing popularity in the epistemology of modality. One alleged reason to prefer modal empiricism over more traditional, rationalist modal epistemologies is that empiricism avoids the problem with the integration challenge that arise for rationalism, assuming that we want to be realists about modal metaphysics. In this paper, I argue that given two very reasonable constraints on what it means to meet the (...)
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  • Symposium on Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2013 - Analysis 73 (4):751-770.
    This is a symposium on my book, Writing the Book of the World, containing a precis from me, criticisms from Contessa, Merricks, and Schaffer, and replies by me.
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  • Replies to Dorr, Fine, and Hirsch.Theodore Sider - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (3):733-754.
    This is a symposium on my book, Writing the Book of the World, containing a precis from me, criticisms from Dorr, Fine, and Hirsch, and replies by me.
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  • Safety, the Preface Paradox and Possible Worlds Semantics.Michael J. Shaffer - 2019 - Axiomathes 29 (4):347-361.
    This paper contains an argument to the effect that possible worlds semantics renders semantic knowledge impossible, no matter what ontological interpretation is given to possible worlds. The essential contention made is that possible worlds semantic knowledge is unsafe and this is shown by a parallel with the preface paradox.
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  • Worlds Enough for Junk.David Sanson - 2016 - Res Philosophica 93 (1):1-18.
    The possibility of Junk is the possibility that something exists and everything is a proper part. Just as we might imagine that there are no simples—that everything has a proper part, all the way down—we might imagine that there are no caps—that everything is a proper part, all the way up. It is not obvious that this apparent possibility can be accommodated within a Lewisian modal framework. For Lewis, every possibility involves the existence of a possible world, and a possible (...)
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  • The Logic of What Might Have Been.Nathan Salmon - 1989 - Philosophical Review 98 (1):3-34.
    The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted. The author exposes fallacies in standard arguments supporting S5, arguing that propositional metaphysical modal logic is weaker even than both S4 and B, and is instead the minimal and weak metaphysical-modal logic T.
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  • Possible Worlds and the Objective World.Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (2):389-422.
    David Lewis holds that a single possible world can provide more than one way things could be. But what are possible worlds good for if they come apart from ways things could be? We can make sense of this if we go in for a metaphysical understanding of what the world is. The world does not include everything that is the case—only the genuine facts. Understood this way, Lewis's “cheap haecceitism” amounts to a kind of metaphysical anti-haecceitism: it says there (...)
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  • On A Neglected Path to Intuitionism.Ian Rumfitt - 2012 - Topoi 31 (1):101-109.
    According to Quine, in any disagreement over basic logical laws the contesting parties must mean different things by the connectives or quantifiers implicated in those laws; when a deviant logician ‘tries to deny the doctrine he only changes the subject’. The standard semantics for intuitionism offers some confirmation for this thesis, for it represents an intuitionist as attaching quite different senses to the connectives than does a classical logician. All the same, I think Quine was wrong, even about the dispute (...)
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  • Do possible worlds compromise God’s beauty? A reply to Mark Ian Thomas Robson.Jon Robson - 2012 - Religious Studies 48 (4):515 - 532.
    In a recent article Mark Ian Thomas Robson argues that there is a clear contradiction between the view that possible worlds are a part of God's nature and the theologically pivotal, but philosophically neglected, claim that God is perfectly beautiful. In this article I show that Robson's argument depends on several key assumptions that he fails to justify and as such that there is reason to doubt the soundness of his argument. I also demonstrate that if Robson's argument were sound (...)
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