tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35477414.post5979770598640639025..comments2023-06-17T02:25:08.805-07:00Comments on the net self.: what i'm studying this semester.laura.ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638164730513113228noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35477414.post-81939048539275362652008-03-19T13:44:00.000-07:002008-03-19T13:44:00.000-07:00pei, you are such a babe- those are great question...pei, you are such a babe- those are great questions. and since i'm on spring break AND trying to write a paper on this topic i can take a few minutes and try to answer them!<BR/><BR/>a lot of the work of the book is explaining what he means by "exist", but, roughly: <BR/><BR/>(1) they are CONCRETE, not abstract. on the one hand, this assertion that all possible worlds are concrete is what sets lewis' theory apart (there are lots of possible world theories, but mostly they argue that worlds are stories, sets of sentences, or sets of images or something). on the other hand, lewis doesn't like the concrete/abstract distinction because he doesn't think it's very clear what it is-- but goes through a whole list of things that we might mean, and says that on any account, if you insist on making the concrete/abstract distinction, the worlds he's talking about are concrete (more like tables or stars than like numbers; fully detailed; particular individuals; not abstracted from something else; having, within themselves, causal and spatiotemporal relationship).<BR/><BR/>(2) they are NOT "actual"-- only one possible world is the actual world, and that's our world. here's the catch: he wants to use the term "actual" as an indexical, like "i" or "here", just meant to specify the world that we happen to be in. so we inhabit the "actual" world, but the terms doesn't name anything "ontologically interesting"-- because all possible worlds are concrete, just as our world is. they "exist" just as ours does-- only they're not actual-- not causally or spatiotemporally related to us in any way.<BR/><BR/>impossible worlds! lewis doesn't argue for them, but he does joke about it in an illustrative way:<BR/><BR/>"the way things are, at its most inclusive, means the way this entire world is. but things might have been different, in ever so many ways. this book of mine might have been finished on schedule. or, had i not been such a commonsensical chap, i might be defending no only a plurality of possible worlds, but also a plurality of impossible worlds, whereof you speak truly by contradicting yourself...there are ever so many ways that a world might be; and one of these many ways is the way that this world is."<BR/><BR/>and as for your third question, it's a doozy. a lot of people say no for a whole bunch of different reasons. the one i'm writing about right now (and the one i'm most interested in) is that lewis does indeed establish truth conditions for possibility statements (it is possible if and only if it is true at some world), but we can never verify whether it IS true, because we can't investigate other possible worlds. i'm tempted to argree emphatically with this objection, but this might be based on some unfair assumptions about what lewis thinks of as his project. i'm going to be a little vague here, because i can't quite figure it out yet, but one response to the criticism might go something like this: when we talk about what's possible we're very often discussing worlds that MIGHT BE OUR WORLD (for all that we know). the information that we're really after we can find by investigating our own world, trying to figure out what world it IS. and anyway if possible worlds were the sorts of things that we could investigate, they wouldn't be the right sorts of things to a underwrite our modal talk.<BR/><BR/>so now i've ended by talking about the role of our epistemic limitations in motivating our claims about possibility-- which is what one of your other comments is about, if i remember correctly.laura.ghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13638164730513113228noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35477414.post-18974466221397894022008-03-19T10:14:00.000-07:002008-03-19T10:14:00.000-07:00Okay, so . . . I know I shouldn't go here, because...Okay, so . . . I know I shouldn't go here, because I am not in that seminar and can't pretend to be, but I have a few questions. <BR/><BR/>If all possible worlds exist, what does "exist" mean in that sentence?<BR/><BR/>Is that statement merely tautological, or in other words, can there be an impossible world? <BR/><BR/>And if all possible worlds exist, does that help resolve the question of the truth of statements about possibilities?Lowryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11412226146277773482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35477414.post-78812520929379956012008-02-28T04:51:00.000-08:002008-02-28T04:51:00.000-08:00this post confirms a few things for me, the most i...this post confirms a few things for me, the most important of which is that you should be watching "lost."boo.https://www.blogger.com/profile/05024747362403082036noreply@blogger.com