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.

_Naming and Necessity_ has had a great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of naming, and of identity. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here reissued in a newly corrected form with a new preface by the author. If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics, or in philosophy of language, this is (...) it. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy has recently demonstrated a revived interest in metaphysical problems about possibility and necessity. Graeme Forbes here provides a careful description of the logical background of recent work in this area for those who may be unfamiliar with it, moving on to d discuss the distinction between modality de re and modality de dicto and the ontological commitments of possible worlds semantics. In addition, Forbes offers a unified theory of the essential properties of sets, organisms, artefacts, substances, and events, (...) based on the doctrine that identity facts must be intrinsically grounded, and analyzes and rejects apparent counterexamples to this doctrine. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the case that has been made for origin essentialism and find it wanting. I focus on the arguments of Nathan Salmon and Graeme Forbes. Like most origin essentialists, Salmon and Forbes have been concerned to respect the intuition that slight variation in the origin of an artifact or organism is possible. But, I argue, both of their arguments fail to respect this intuition. Salmon's argument depends on a sufficiency principle for cross-world identity, which should be (...) rejected, if - as Salmon concedes - a given artifact might have been originally made from slightly different material. Similarly, Forbes's argument succeeds only if essentially the same argument can be used to establish a claim that - by his own admission - is too strong, namely that no variation, however slight, in an organism's origin is possible. (shrink)

A transcript of three lectures, given at Princeton University in 1970, which deals with (inter alia) debates concerning proper names in the philosophy of language.

A novel treatment of an issue central to much current work in metaphysics: the distinction between the essential and accidental properties of individuals. Mackie challenges widely held views, and arrives at what she calls "minimalist essentialism," an unorthodox theory according to which ordinary individuals have relatively few interesting essential properties. Mackie's clear and accessible discussions of issues surrounding necessity and essentialism mean that the book will appeal as much to graduate students as it will to seasoned metaphysicians.

ln "Possibilities and the Arguments for Origin Essentialism" Teresa Robertson (1998) contends that the best-known arguments in favour of origin essentialism can succeed only at the cost of violating modal common sense—by denying that any variation in constitution or process of assembly is possible. Focusing on the (Kripke-style) arguments of Nathan Salmon and Graeme Forbes, Robertson shows that both founder in the face of sophisticated Ship of Theseus style considerations. While Robertson is right that neither of the arguments is compelling (...) as formulated, each can be modified to fend off her particular counterexamples; these modifications do not differ in kind from those already needed to deal with ordinary Theseus cases, requiring only a further narrowing of the sufficiency clause from which the necessity of origins is derived. (shrink)

I EXISTENTIAL PROOFS INTRODUCTION Metaphysical problems, like all philosophical problems, arise from a sense of puzzlement. What is puzzling is that the ...

In this paper, I want eventually to get around to proposing a criterion of identity for events which are changes in physical objects, where events are construed as comprising a distinct metaphysical category of thing. The proposal will be preceded by a discussion of what I take to be a mistaken suggestion for such a criterion; I will do that because I think that seeing what it takes to show why that suggestion fails helps to motivate a theory about what (...) it is to be an event; and that theory wi II supply the conceptual foundations for my proposal concerning the criterion of identity for events. Before that suggestion is discussed, however, I want to discuss briefly an aspect of the question, Why do we have to give a criterion of identity for events, or for objects of any sort whatsoever? I want to have a brief look at the connection between identity criteria and the idea of a kind of object. (shrink)

It is obvious that identical events must occur at the same time. This follows simply from the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals and from the fact that events have temporal features among which are those which attribute to events times of occurrence. Thus, )).But from the fact that is true, and is, indeed, true necessarily, it does not follow that events necessarily occur at the times at which they in fact occur. This latter claim about events is expressed as (...) follows: ). (shrink)