Results for 'David Lewis Modal Realism'

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  1. A Comparative Analysis of David Lewis' Modal Realism and Everett's Many Worlds on Closed Time-like Curves and Time Travel.Fabian Kerj - 2023 - Dissertation, King's College London
    This paper explores the physical and metaphysical implications of time travel, focusing on the possibility of changing the past, through a comparative analysis of David Lewis' modal realism and Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The existence of closed timelike curves (CTCs) in certain solutions to Einstein's field equations provides a theoretical basis for the possibility of backwards time travel, but this leads to a range of paradoxes, most notably the grandfather paradox. David Lewis (...)
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  2. Lewis' Modal Realism and Absence Causation.Joseph A. Baltimore - 2011 - Metaphysica 12 (2):117-124.
    A major criticism of David Lewis’ counterfactual theory of causation is that it allows too many things to count as causes, especially since Lewis allows, in addition to events, absences to be causes as well. Peter Menzies has advanced this concern under the title “the problem of profligate causation.” In this paper, I argue that the problem of profligate causation provides resources for exposing a tension between Lewis’ acceptance of absence causation and his modal (...). The result is a different problem of profligate causation—one that attacks the internal consistency of Lewisian metaphysics rather than employing common sense judgments or intuitions that conflict with Lewis’ extensive list of causes. (shrink)
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  3. David Lewis on Ways Things Might Be: An Examination of Modal Realism through Lewis’s Correspondence.A. R. J. Fisher - 2024 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 80 (4):1059-1080.
    David Lewis is widely known for maintaining the bizarre thesis known as genuine modal realism (hereafter, modal realism). He argued for modal realism on grounds of serviceability in On the Plurality of Worlds. However, earlier in Counterfactuals, he proposed a different kind of argument: from talk of ways things might be to possible worlds. In this paper, I examine the evolution of the latter argument in Lewis’s thought and evaluate its place (...)
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  4. Spread Worlds, Plenitude and Modal Realism: A Problem for David Lewis.Charles Pigden & Rebecca E. B. Entwisle - 2012 - In James Maclaurin (ed.), Rationis Defensor: Essays in Honour of Colin Cheyne. Springer.
    In his metaphysical summa of 1986, The Plurality of Worlds, David Lewis famously defends a doctrine he calls ‘modal realism’, the idea that to account for the fact that some things are possible and some things are necessary we must postulate an infinity possible worlds, concrete entities like our own universe, but cut off from us in space and time. Possible worlds are required to account for the facts of modality without assuming that modality is primitive (...)
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  5. Modal Realism and Anthropic Reasoning.Mario Gómez-Torrente - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (4):925-938.
    Some arguments against David Lewis’s modal realism seek to exploit apparent inconsistencies between it and anthropic reasoning. A recent argument, in particular, seeks to exploit an inconsistency between modal realism and typicality anthropic premises, premises common in the literature on physical multiverses, to the effect that observers who are like human observers in certain respects must be typical in the relevant multiverse. Here I argue that typicality premises are not applicable to the description of (...)
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  6. Modal Realism, Counterpart Theory, and Unactualized Possibilities.Joseph A. Baltimore - 2014 - Metaphysica 15 (1):209–217.
    It is a commonsense thesis that unactualized possibilities are not parts of actuality. To keep his modal realism in line with this thesis, David Lewis employed his indexical account of the term “actual.” I argue that the addition of counterpart theory to Lewis’s modal realism undermines his strategy for respecting the commonsense thesis. The case made here also reveals a problem for Lewis’s attempt to avoid haecceitism.
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  7. Modal Realism, Still At Your Convenience.Mark Jago & Harold Noonan - 2016 - Analysis:anx037.
    Divers (2014) presents a set of de re modal truths which, he claims, are inconvenient for Lewisean modal realism. We argue that there is no inconvenience for Lewis.
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  8. Modal realism, still at your convenience.Harold Noonan & Mark Jago - 2017 - Analysis 77 (2):299-303.
    Divers presents a set of de re modal truths which, he claims, are inconvenient for Lewisean modal realism. We argue that there is no inconvenience for Lewis.
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  9. The Modal (Realist) Ontological Argument.Joshua Sijuwade - 2022 - Philosophy and Theology 34 (1):203-264.
    This article aims to provide a new ontological argument for the existence of God. A specific ‘modal’ version of the ontological argument—termed the Modal Realist Ontological Argument—is formulated within the modal realist metaphysical framework of David K. Lewis, Kris McDaniel and Philip Bricker. Formulating this argument within this specific framework will enable the plausibility of its central premise (i.e., the ‘Possibility Premise’) to be established, and allow one to affirm the soundness of the argument—whilst warding (...)
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  10. Against Lewisian Modal Realism from a Metaontological Point of View.Tora Koyama - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (3):1207-1225.
    Modal realism is an ontological position made familiar by David Lewis, according to which there exist possible worlds other than the actual world that we inhabit. It is hard to uphold modal realism, and indeed modal realism has only a few advocates. However, as most contemporary metaphysicians agree, this does not mean that it is easy to refute modal realism. In this paper, I argue against modal realism from (...)
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  11. Cross-World Comparatives for Modal Realists.Robert Michels - 2018 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 25 (3):368-391.
    Divers (2014) argues that a Lewisian theory of modality which includes both counterpart theory and modal realism cannot account for the truth of certain intuitively true modal sentences involving cross-world comparatives. The main purpose of this paper is to defend the Lewisian theory against Divers’s challenge by developing a response strategy based on a degree-theoretic treatment of comparatives and by showing that this treatment is compatible with the theory.
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  12. Middle Knowledge and the Grounding Objection: A Modal Realist Solution.Joshua R. Sijuwade - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (4):1-42.
    This article aims to provide a defense of the coherence of the doctrine of middle knowledge against the Grounding Objection. A solution to the Grounding Objection is provided by utilising the metaphysical thesis of Modal Realism proposed by David K. Lewis (as further developed by Kris McDaniel and Philip Bricker). Utilising this metaphysical thesis will enable the Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom, that are part of God’s middle knowledge, to have pre-volitional truthmakers, and thus, ultimately, we will (...)
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  13. Necessitism, Contingentism, and Lewisian Modal Realism.Cristina Nencha - 2022 - Acta Analytica 37 (2):227-247.
    Necessitism is the controversial thesis that necessarily everything is necessarily something, namely that everything, everywhere, necessarily exists. What is controversial about necessitism is that, at its core, it claims that things could not have failed to exist, while we have a pre-theoretical intuition that not everything necessarily exists. Contingentism, in accordance with common sense, denies necessitism: it claims that some things could have failed to exist. Timothy Williamson is a necessitist and claims that David Lewis is a necessitist (...)
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  14. Advanced Modalizing Problems.Mark Jago - 2016 - Mind 125 (499):627-642.
    I present an internal problem for David Lewis’s genuine modal realism. My aim is to show that his analysis of modality is inconsistent with his metaphysics. I consider several ways of modifying the Lewisian analysis of modality, but argue that none are successful. I argue that the problem also affects theories related to genuine modal realism, including the stage theory of persistence and modal fictionalism.
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  15. Reply to Richard Davis.Graham Oppy - 2009 - Philosophia Christi 11 (2):423-436.
    This paper is a response to a paper by Rich Davis in which he argues that David Lewis' modal realism is inconsistent with classical theism. I provide what I take to be a coherent modal realist formulation of classical theism.
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  16. Indexicalidad Y Realismo Modal.Eduardo Alejandro Barrio - 1999 - Cuadernos de Filosofía 45:49-67.
    In this paper, I attempt to throw some light on modal realism. Since it is David Lewis who has put forward the best arguments for thar position, I focus on his work. In the first, I point out that his approach does not provide an adequate account for the intuitive lack of symmetry between the actual and the possible. To begin with, I try to show that the strategy of appealing to both the spatio-temporal network and (...)
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  17. Possible girls.Neil Sinhababu - 2008 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89 (2):254–260.
    I argue that if David Lewismodal realism is true, modal realists from different possible worlds can fall in love with each other. I offer a method for uniquely picking out possible people who are in love with us and not with our counterparts. Impossible lovers and trans-world love letters are considered. Anticipating objections, I argue that we can stand in the right kinds of relations to merely possible people to be in love with them (...)
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  18. Purely Intentional Modal Fictionalism.Hicham Jakha - forthcoming - European Journal of Philosophy:e13049.
    This article brings two outstanding figures into conversation about the problem of fictional entities and their indeterminacies: Roman Ingarden and David Lewis. Lewis’s account of fiction lacks an adequate ontology of ficta-qua-objects. Relying on his modal realism does not help, for it would make ficta “concrete” entities that merely indexically differ from our world’s entities. In this regard, I refer to Ingarden’s “purely intentional entities”. I read Lewis’s possible worlds in terms of Ingarden’s ontology; (...)
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  19. Modal Structure and Sellars' Metaphysical Methodology.Catherine Legg & Aiden Meyer - 2024 - In Krisztián Pete & László Kocsis (eds.), Wilfrid Sellars’ Images and the Philosophy in Between: Nature and Norms in a Stereoscopic View. London: Bloomsbury.
    Wilfrid Sellars’ distinctive scientific realism has lately been gaining ground, but a crucial issue is how it can or should theorize modality. We argue that many interesting questions in this area transcend the usual ‘first-order’ concerns: “Is there an objectivist modal ontology?” and “What modal entities should we posit”? Rather, Sellars invites us to take a fresh look at the relationship between logic and metaphysics through an investigation of ‘second-order’ philosophical categories. This investigation contrasts with both the (...)
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  20. Mundos possíveis, propriedades naturais e mereologia.Renato Rocha - 2017 - Dissertation, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
    I argue in this dissertation that natural properties play a central role in David Lewis' modal realism. To argue in favor of this thesis I present: a bottom-up explanation of a top-down possible world metaphysics; a new definition of natural properties and natural fusion, a new mereological operation. To achieve these aims, in the first chapter, I contextualize the discussion, in the second I resume the discussion about universals in contemporary philosophy and argue that, considering the (...)
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  21. Overall similarity, natural properties, and paraphrases.Ghislain Guigon - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (2):387-399.
    I call anti-resemblism the thesis that independently of any contextual specification there is no determinate fact of the matter about the comparative overall similarity of things. Anti-resemblism plays crucial roles in the philosophy of David Lewis. For instance, Lewis has argued that his counterpart theory is anti-essentialist on the grounds that counterpart relations are relations of comparative overall similarity and that anti-resemblism is true. After Lewis committed himself to a form of realism about natural properties (...)
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  22. Genuine modal realism and the empty world.David Efird & Tom Stoneham - 2005 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 1 (1):21-37.
    We argue that genuine modal realism can be extended, rather than modified, so as to allow for the possibility of nothing concrete, a possibility we term ‘metaphysical nihilism’. The issue should be important to the genuine modal realist because, not only is metaphysical nihilism itself intuitively plausible, but also it is supported by an argument with pre-theoretically credible premises, namely, the subtraction argument. Given the soundness of the subtraction argument, we show that there are two ways that (...)
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  23. Plenitude and Recombination.Alastair Wilson - 2022 - In Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    In On the Plurality of Worlds (Lewis 1986), David Lewis imposes a condition on realist theories of modality which he calls ‘plenitude’. Lewis apparently assigns this condition considerable importance, and uses it to motivate his Humean principle of recombination, but he never says exactly what plenitude amounts to. This chapter first sets aside some obvious ways of reconstructing the plenitude criterion which do not fit with the textual evidence. An objection to modal realism due (...)
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  24. Modal theistic arguments.Graham Oppy - 1993 - Sophia 32 (2):17-24.
    This paper discusses a range of modal ontological arguments. It is claimed that these modal ontological arguments fail because they depend upon controversial assumptions about the nature of modal space.
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  25. Duas teorias realistas para a interpretação da semântica dos mundos possíveis.Renato Mendes Rocha - 2010 - Inquietude 1 (1):72-79.
    O discurso a respeito dos Mundos Possíveis pode ser uma ferramenta bastante útil para a filosofia. Pode ser útil, por exemplo, para a compreensão das modalidades, da necessidade e da possibilidade. No entanto, para utilizar o discurso dos Mundos Possíveis devemos ter uma explicação satisfatória do caráter ontológico da Semântica dos Mundos Possíveis. Para isso, precisamos responder a questões do tipo: O que é um Mundo Possível? De que forma eles existem? Em quantos Mundos Possíveis podemos falar? Há diversas formas (...)
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  26. On the Probability of Plenitude.Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2020 - Journal of Philosophy 117 (5):267-292.
    I examine what the mathematical theory of random structures can teach us about the probability of Plenitude, a thesis closely related to David Lewis's modal realism. Given some natural assumptions, Plenitude is reasonably probable a priori, but in principle it can be (and plausibly it has been) empirically disconfirmed—not by any general qualitative evidence, but rather by our de re evidence.
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  27. Modal Realism and the PSR.Tarik Tijanovic - 2024 - In Yannic Kappes, Asya Passinsky, Julio De Rizzo & Benjamin Schnieder (eds.), Facets of Reality — Contemporary Debates. Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 772-779.
    Peter Van Inwagen argues that The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) either leads to contradiction or it leads to necessitarianism. Although I agree with Van Inwagen that the relationship between the PSR and necessitarianism is close, I argue that the PSR is compatible with innocent versions of necessitarianism. In this project my main argument is that modal realism can account for the PSR and integrate it within an innocent version of necessitarianism. My main claim will be that each (...)
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  28. David Lewis, Donald C. Williams, and the History of Metaphysics in the Twentieth Century.A. R. J. Fisher - 2015 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1):3--22.
    The revival of analytic metaphysics in the latter half of the twentieth century is typically understood as a consequence of the critiques of logical positivism, Quine’s naturalization of ontology, Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, clarifications of modal notions in logic, and the theoretical exploitation of possible worlds. However, this explanation overlooks the work of metaphysicians at the height of positivism and linguisticism that affected metaphysics of the late twentieth century. Donald C. Williams is one such philosopher. In this paper I (...)
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  29. The Metaphysics of Theism: A Classical and Neo-Classical Synthesis.Joshua R. Sijuwade - 2021 - Religions 12 (11):1-29.
    This article aims to provide a metaphysical elucidation of the notion of Theism and a coherent theological synthesis of two extensions of this notion: Classical Theism and Neo-Classical Theism. A model of this notion and its extensions is formulated within the ontological pluralism framework of Kris McDaniel and Jason Turner, and the (modified) modal realism framework of David Lewis, which enables it to be explicated clearly and consistently, and two often raised objections against the elements of (...)
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  30. Natural Properties, Supervenience, and Mereology.Andrea Borghini & Giorgio Lando - 2011 - Humana Mente 4 (19):79-104.
    The interpretation of Lewis‘s doctrine of natural properties is difficult and controversial, especially when it comes to the bearers of natural properties. According to the prevailing reading – the minimalist view – perfectly natural properties pertain to the micro-physical realm and are instantiated by entities without proper parts or point-like. This paper argues that there are reasons internal to a broadly Lewisian kind of metaphysics to think that the minimalist view is fundamentally flawed and that a liberal view, according (...)
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  31. Eight Arguments for First‐Person Realism.David Builes - 2024 - Philosophy Compass 19 (1):e12959.
    According to First-Person Realism, one's own first-person perspective on the world is metaphysically privileged in some way. After clarifying First-Person Realism by reference to parallel debates in the metaphysics of modality and time, I survey eight different arguments in favor of First-Person Realism.
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  32. Propriedades Naturais e Mundos Possíveis.Renato Mendes Rocha - 2015 - Coleção XVI Encontro ANPOF.
    O objetivo geral da pesquisa da qual esse artigo faz parte é investigar o sistema metafísico que emerge dos trabalhos de David Lewis. Esse sistema pode ser decomposto em pelo menos duas teorias. A primeira nomeada como realismo modal genuíno (RMG) e a segunda como mosaico neo-humeano. O RMG é, sem dúvida, mais popular e defende a hipótese metafísica da existência de uma pluralidade de mundos possíveis. A principal razão em favor dessa hipótese é a sua aplicabilidade (...)
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  33. Against Yagisawa's modal realism.Mark Jago - 2013 - Analysis 73 (1):10-17.
    In his book Worlds and Individuals, Possible and Otherwise (2010), Takashi Yagisawa presents and argues for a novel and imaginative version of modal realism. It differs both from Lewis’s modal realism (Lewis 1986) and from actualists’ ersatz accounts (Adams 1974; Sider 2002). In this paper, I’ll present two arguments, each of which shows that Yagisawa’s metaphysics is incoherent. The first argument shows that the combination of Yagisawa’s metaphysics with impossibilia leads to triviality: every sentence (...)
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  34. Necessity First.Alastair Wilson - 2022 - Argumenta 14.
    My topic in this paper is the relationships of metaphysical priority which might hold between the different alethic modal statuses—necessity, contingency, possibility and impossibility. In particular, I am interested in exploring the view that the necessity of necessities is ungrounded while the contingency of contingencies is grounded—a scenario I call ‘necessity first’. I will explicate and scrutinize the contrast between necessity first and its ‘contingency first’ contrary, and then compare both views with ‘multimodal’ and ‘amodal’ alternatives, drawing on (...) Lewis’s modal realism and Barbara Vetter’s potentialism as example cases. I will then defend the necessity-first point of view from a reversed version of Blackburn’s classic dilemma against theories of the source of necessity. (shrink)
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  35. On the Indispensability of (Im)Possibilia.Martin Vacek - 2013 - Humana Mente 6 (25).
    According to modal realism formulated by David Lewis, there exist concrete possible worlds. As he argues the hypothesis is serviceable and that is a sufficient reason to think it is true. On the other side, Lewis does not consider the pragmatic reasons to be conclusive. He admits that the theoretical benefits of modal realism can be illusory or that the acceptance of controversial ontology for the sake of theoretical benefits might be misguided in (...)
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  36. Real impossible worlds : the bounds of possibility.Ira Georgia Kiourti - 2010 - Dissertation, University of St Andrews
    Lewisian Genuine Realism about possible worlds is often deemed unable to accommodate impossible worlds and reap the benefits that these bestow to rival theories. This thesis explores two alternative extensions of GR into the terrain of impossible worlds. It is divided in six chapters. Chapter I outlines Lewis’ theory, the motivations for impossible worlds, and the central problem that such worlds present for GR: How can GR even understand the notion of an impossible world, given Lewis’ reductive (...)
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  37. Realizm modalny i okresy warunkowe z niemożliwymi poprzednikami [Modal Realism and Counterpossibles].Maciej Sendłak - 2014 - Filozofia Nauki 22 (4).
    To solve the problem of counterpossibles, many philosophers have been arguing that one needs to invoke impossible worlds. This extension of the ontology of modality should save the analysis of counterfactuals from being insensitive to the problem of counterpossibles. Since theories of impossible worlds are extensions of original accounts of modalities, it is worth stressing that proper analyses of counterpossibles should not weaken the latter.In this paper I argue that these theories of impossible wolrds, which are based on D. (...)' modal realism - Extended Modal Realism and Hybrid Modal Realism - might be consider as either an unattractive for modal realists or insufficient for analyzing counterpossibles. (shrink)
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  38. Two concepts of possible worlds – or only one?Jiri Benovsky - 2008 - Theoria 74 (4):318-330.
    In his "Two concepts of possible worlds", Peter Van Inwagen explores two kinds of views about the nature of possible worlds : abstractionism and concretism. The latter is the view defended by David Lewis who claims that possible worlds are concrete spatio-temporal universes, very much like our own, causally and spatio-temporally disconnected from each other. The former is the view of the majority who claims that possible worlds are some kind of abstract objects – such as propositions, properties, (...)
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  39. Center indifference and skepticism.David Builes - 2024 - Noûs 58 (3):778-798.
    Many philosophers have been attracted to a restricted version of the principle of indifference in the case of self‐locating belief. Roughly speaking, this principle states that, within any given possible world, one should be indifferent between different hypotheses concerning who one is within that possible world, so long as those hypotheses are compatible with one's evidence. My first goal is to defend a more precise version of this principle. After responding to several existing criticisms of such a principle, I argue (...)
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  40. The limits of classical mereology: Mixed fusions and the failures of mereological hybridism.Joshua Kelleher - 2020 - Dissertation, The University of Queensland
    In this thesis I argue against unrestricted mereological hybridism, the view that there are absolutely no constraints on wholes having parts from many different logical or ontological categories, an exemplar of which I take to be ‘mixed fusions’. These are composite entities which have parts from at least two different categories – the membered (as in classes) and the non-membered (as in individuals). As a result, mixed fusions can also be understood to represent a variety of cross-category summation such as (...)
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  41. Measurement and Quantum Dynamics in the Minimal Modal Interpretation of Quantum Theory.Jacob A. Barandes & David Kagan - 2020 - Foundations of Physics 50 (10):1189-1218.
    Any realist interpretation of quantum theory must grapple with the measurement problem and the status of state-vector collapse. In a no-collapse approach, measurement is typically modeled as a dynamical process involving decoherence. We describe how the minimal modal interpretation closes a gap in this dynamical description, leading to a complete and consistent resolution to the measurement problem and an effective form of state collapse. Our interpretation also provides insight into the indivisible nature of measurement—the fact that you can't stop (...)
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  42. The Minimal Modal Interpretation of Quantum Theory.Jacob Barandes & David Kagan - manuscript
    We introduce a realist, unextravagant interpretation of quantum theory that builds on the existing physical structure of the theory and allows experiments to have definite outcomes but leaves the theory’s basic dynamical content essentially intact. Much as classical systems have specific states that evolve along definite trajectories through configuration spaces, the traditional formulation of quantum theory permits assuming that closed quantum systems have specific states that evolve unitarily along definite trajectories through Hilbert spaces, and our interpretation extends this intuitive picture (...)
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  43. A Synopsis of the Minimal Modal Interpretation of Quantum Theory.Jacob Barandes & David Kagan - manuscript
    We summarize a new realist, unextravagant interpretation of quantum theory that builds on the existing physical structure of the theory and allows experiments to have definite outcomes but leaves the theory's basic dynamical content essentially intact. Much as classical systems have specific states that evolve along definite trajectories through configuration spaces, the traditional formulation of quantum theory permits assuming that closed quantum systems have specific states that evolve unitarily along definite trajectories through Hilbert spaces, and our interpretation extends this intuitive (...)
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  44. On the Plurality of Worlds: David Lewis[REVIEW]Louis Derosset - 2011 - Humana Mente 4 (19).
    A commentary on David Lewis's /On the Plurality of Worlds/.
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  45. Impossible Worlds.David Vander Laan - 1999 - Dissertation, University of Notre Dame
    The theory of possible worlds has permeated analytic philosophy in recent decades, and its best versions have a consequence which has gone largely unnoticed: in addition to the panoply of possible worlds, there are a great many impossible worlds. A uniform ontological method alone should bring the friends of possible worlds to adopt impossible worlds, I argue, but the theory's applications also provide strong incentives. In particular, the theory facilitates an account of counterfactuals which avoids several of the implausible results (...)
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  46. Alethic modalities, temporal modalities, and representation.Jiri Benovsky - 2015 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 29 (1):19-36.
    In this article, I am interested in four versions of what is often referred to as "the Humphrey objection". This objection was initially raised by Kripke against Lewis's modal counterpart theory, so this is where I will start the discussion. As we will see, there is a perfectly good answer to the objection. I will then examine other places where a similar objection can be raised: it can arise in the case of temporal counterpart theory (in fact, it (...)
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  47. On the translation from quantified modal logic to counterpart theory.Cristina Nencha - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-15.
    Lewis (1968) claims that his language of Counterpart Theory (CT) interprets modal discourse and he adverts to a translation scheme from the language of Quantifed Modal Logic (QML) to CT. However, everybody now agrees that his original translation scheme does not always work, since it does not always preserve the ‘intuitive’ meaning of the translated QML-formulas. Lewis discusses this problem with regard to the Necessitist Thesis, and I will extend his discourse to the analysis of the (...)
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  48. Problems for Modal Reductionism: Concrete Possible Worlds as a Test Case.Jonathan Nassim - 2015 - Dissertation, Birkbeck College
    This thesis is an argument for the view that there are problems for Modal Reductionism, the thesis that modality can satisfactorily be defined in non-modal terms. -/- I proceed via a case study of David Lewis’s theory of concrete possible worlds. This theory is commonly regarded as the best and most influential candidate reductive theory of modality. Based on a detailed examination of its ontology, analysis and justification, I conclude that it does badly with respect to (...)
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  49. Realism v Equilibrism about Philosophy.Daniel Stoljar - forthcoming - Syzetesis 1.
    Abstract: According to the realist about philosophy, the goal of philosophy is to come to know the truth about philosophical questions; according to what Helen Beebee calls equilibrism, by contrast, the goal is rather to place one’s commitments in a coherent system. In this paper, I present a critique of equilibrism in the form Beebee defends it, paying particular attention to her suggestion that various meta-philosophical remarks made by David Lewis may be recruited to defend equilibrism. At the (...)
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  50. Modal logic and philosophy.Sten Lindström & Krister Segerberg - 2006 - In Patrick Blackburn, Johan van Benthem & Frank Wolter (eds.), Handbook of Modal Logic. Elsevier. pp. 1149-1214.
    Modal logic is one of philosophy’s many children. As a mature adult it has moved out of the parental home and is nowadays straying far from its parent. But the ties are still there: philosophy is important to modal logic, modal logic is important for philosophy. Or, at least, this is a thesis we try to defend in this chapter. Limitations of space have ruled out any attempt at writing a survey of all the work going on (...)
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