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Topic: Modal realism

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Modal logic

David Lewis (philosopher)

	Modal realism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Modal realism is the view, notably propounded by David Lewis, that possible worlds are as real as the actual world.
		There is at least one possible world at which modal realism is wrong, and at which another theory, offering the same benefits but entailing the existence of only one world (itself), is correct.
		However, the chief critical response to modal realism is what Lewis calls 'The Incredulous Stare', this is simply the view that modal realism is intuitively grotesque.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Modal_realism (953 words)

	Possible world - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Intense debate has also emerged over the ontological status of possible worlds, provoked especially by David Lewis's defense of modal realism, the doctrine that talk about "possible worlds" is best explained in terms of innumerable, really existing worlds beyond the one we live in.
		In the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, the collapse of the wavefunction is interpreted by introducing a quantum superposition of states of a possibly infinite number of identical "parallel universes", all of which exist "actually", according to some proponents.
		In this approach, the modal structure of the fictional text is analysed in relation to its narrative and thematic concerns.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Possible_worlds (1189 words)

	[No title]
		"The Semantics of Modal Notions and the Indeterminacy of Ontology", Synthese 21: 408-424.
		Modality 'de re' is vindicated: a property belongs to the real essence of a thing if every counterpart of the thing, in every possible world, has the property.
		It is argued that Lewis's modal realism is either arbitrary and stipulative or else it is circular.
	fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu /~sider/teaching/modality_bib.htm (13258 words)

	David Lewis: Modal Realism
		Modal Realism is fruitful; that gives us good reason to believe that it is true.
		Lewis appears to be admitting something like this: `It is possible that modal realism is wrong, and that another theory, offering the same benefits but entailing the existence of only one world (this one), is correct'.
		Or he can claim that modal realism is necessarily true (this would, of course, still leave him free to say that modal realism is epistemically possibly wrong).
	users.ox.ac.uk /~worc0337/modal.realism.html (2488 words)

	Desert Landscapes » Blog Archive » Modal Realism without Possible Worlds (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
		My suggestion is that the truthmakers of modal statements are modal facts, with are all facts in the actual world.
		modalities from being operators to being part of the properties.
		Lewis has a much more expansive modality due to his allowance of alien things composed (perhaps even entirely) of parts not in the actual world at all, since they could be in that world in addition to all the counterparts of everything in the actual world.
	www.arizonaphilosophy.com /index.php?p=69 (958 words)

	20th WCP: Epistemological Positions in the Light of Truth Approximation
		The question even arises whether this is really a coherent way of deviating from scientific practice where it seems totally accepted that the concept of observation is stretched to the suggested theory-laden interpretation.
		Theory realism shares with referential realism the claim that theoretical terms are supposed to refer, and that, from time to time, we have good reasons to assume that they refer, including the corresponding truth approximation claims.
		According to this extreme form of realism, the challenge of science is to uncover the ideal conceptualization, that is, to discover and extend the ideal vocabulary, on the basis of which perfect observational, referential and theoretical truths can be formulated.
	www.bu.edu /wcp/Papers/Scie/ScieKuip.htm (3491 words)

	Modal Theistic Arguments
		Sometimes, when we make a modal statement, we may mean only to quantify over some of the worlds: in that case, it will be true to say that an object possesses a property necessarily iff all of the counterparts of that object in all of the worlds over which we quantify possess the property.
		Perhaps we should prefer ersatz modal realism, which takes possible worlds to be abstract entities which represent ways that worlds might have been.
		Plantinga claims that the modal theist is free to accept the first of these arguments, and to reject the second.
	www.infidels.org /library/modern/graham_oppy/modal.html (2309 words)

	Guide to Reality
		Picking up the thread on modal metaphysics (most recent post here): If I follow Armstrong’s truth/truthmaker approach to metaphysics and I insist it apply adequately to modal truths regarding necessity and possibility, it seems to lead (contra Armstrong’s own conclusion) to a modal realism involving possible worlds.
		Menzel discusses modal logic, and the fact that the simplest modal logic can be made to generate theorems which are troubling to the actualist.
		Real causality implies modality: things could have happened differently if causation is assumed to involve real “work”.
	guidetoreality.blogspot.com (4794 words)

	Brown bag 03 necessary existence
		Modal realism explains the existence of very imperfect worlds as not only compatible with such a God, but required by the existence of such a God.
		The point of the modal realist argument is that such evils are required for the goods of the possible world in question to exist.
		From the point of view of a David Lewis-type modal realist, then, the “problem of evil,” how an apparently imperfect world is compatible with an omnipotent and perfectly good God, is not a problem at all.
	vm.uconn.edu /~swheeler/ModReal.htm (2753 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
		The mystery of modal knowledge, however, is a problem that is }{\i not obviously diminished by abandoning }{modal realism.
		A version of modal realism that relies on a modal primitive must not merely fail to be }{\i complete}{, nor must it merely fail to provide a }{\i reductive analysis }{of modal talk.
		If modal realism is false, and modal quantification and predication cannot be clarified in terms of their non-modal siblings, then there is no more reason to see them as any less naturalistically-acceptable than }{\i non}{-modal logical particles.
	www.mit.edu /~anth/PredicationandPossibility.rtf (10321 words)

	The Incompatibility of Naturalism and Scientific Realism
		The rehabilitation of causation and modal realism in recent analytic philosophy have made possible the revival of the argument from contingency to the existence of a necessary first cause.
		The burden is then shifted to the agnostic, who must garner evidence of a positive sort for the proposition that the cosmos really is an exception to the rule.
		In Realism Regained, I provide a number of arguments for thinking that this is mistaken: that we do, in fact, have experience of the causal efficacy of atemporal situations (such as the situations that support the holding of certain natural laws).
	www.leaderu.com /offices/koons/docs/defeasible.html (3513 words)

	MODAL IMMORTALITY
		These are 1) modal realism, 2) co-reductionism about personal identity and what matters in survival, 3) the belief that causal connexity is unnecessary for personal continuance, and 4) the belief that we are mortal.
		So what the question really amounts to is the worry that a world where one believes in modal immortality is one where she's more likely to put things off than would her counterpart in a world in which that counterpart does not believe in modal immortality.
		But when she realizes her rebellion too has been determined, she tires of the entire enterprise and concludes - rightly, I think - that the free-will/determinism debate is just one of any number of duck-rabbit phenomena, and so, like the rest of us, she moves on.
	people.uleth.ca /~vimip0/papers/modal1.htm (6713 words)

	On the Plurality of Worlds by David K. Lewis [ISBN: 0631224963] - Find Cheap Textbook Prices & Save BIG
		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.
		According to that reviewer, Lewis' modal realism is "completely incompatible" with such a view because the "possible worlds" of which Lewis speaks are spatiotemporally and causally isolated from one another.
	www.gettextbooks.com /isbn_0631224963.html (1286 words)

	Time [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
		Some philosophers are suspicions about whether the future or past are somehow not as real as the present, the feature that is referred to by the word "now." But their opponents argue that, if the future were real, then it would be fixed now, and we would not have the freedom to affect that future.
		This position is called the "block universe" position because it regards reality as a single block of spacetime with its time slices ordered by the temporally-before relation, as in a Minkowski spacetime diagram, although it is understood that not all spacetimes can be given Minkowski diagrams.
		Prior was the first to appreciate that time concepts are similar in structure to modal concepts such as "it is possible that" and "it is necessary that," and so he adapted modal propositional logic for his tense logic.
	www.iep.utm.edu /t/time.htm (15789 words)

	wo's weblog: Mixing Quantified Modal Logic With Counterpart Theory
		(otherwise modal realism would be really nuts: each and every possibility is realized in a world and there are worlds for each and every 'possible' combination of realized possibilities?)
		John thinks that modal operators, when they prefix unrestricted quantifiers are semantically redundant, endorsing the principle that Possibly P iff P in such cases.
		It really just means 'no actually existing thing could have failed to exist _in some possible world_'.
	www.umsu.de /wo/archive/2005/01/05/Mixing_Quantified_Modal_Logic_With_Counterpart_Theory_ (882 words)

	Lecture Course Michaelmas/Lent 2001–2 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
		Realism is thus opposed to idealism, which holds that no such material objects or external realities exist apart from our knowledge or consciousness of them, the whole universe thus being dependent on the mind or in some sense mental.
		I advocate a thesis of plurality of worlds, or modal realism which holds that our world is but one world among many.
		What makes such modal propositions true or false, on a possible worlds account, is how things are in other possible worlds.
	www.unc.edu /~sblackbu/realism.html (4324 words)

	Frank Jackson (ed.), Graham Priest (ed.) - Lewisian Themes: The Philosophy of David K. Lewis - Reviewed by Brian ...
		Summaries of David Lewis's work normally start by mentioning his modal realism, but this presents a somewhat distorted picture of his interests and importance.
		The only paper directly about modal realism is McDaniel's interesting paper on how we might formulate and defend a version of modal realism that allows worlds to overlap.
		And that's it for the discussion of modal realism, which seems about right given its relative importance in Lewis's overall picture.
	ndpr.nd.edu /review.cfm?id=3381 (1553 words)

	Alibris: Modality (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
		This book, one of the first full-length studies of the modalities to emerge from the debate to which Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Ruth Marcus and others have contributed, is an exploraton and defence of the notion of modality "de re," the idea that objects have both essential and accidental properties.
		Informed by her earlier ground-breaking axiomatizations of quantified modal logic, the papers collected here by the distinguished philosopher Ruth Barcan Marcus cover much ground in the development of her thought from 1961 to 1990.
		Unlike most modal logic textbooks, which are both forbidding mathematically and short on philosophical discussion, Modal Logics and Philosophy places its emphasis firmly on showing how useful modal logic can be as a tool for formal philosophy, metaphysics, temporal reasoning, epistemics, the analysis of action and processes, and ethical reasoning....
	www.alibris.com /search/books/subject/Modality (701 words)

	Modal realism - Encyclopedia, History, Geography and Biography
		Modal realism - Encyclopedia, History, Geography and Biography
		This page was last modified 15:59, 16 Mar 2005.
		This encyclopedia, history, geography and biography article about Modal realism contains research on
	www.arikah.net /encyclopedia/Modal_realism (109 words)

	Majikthise : Modal realism and fiction
		Modal Realism justifies a certain amount of care fore fiction.
		Even if modal realism is right, the fact that possible evils are real evils is hidden from our ordinary intuitions.
		A philosopher who fully realizes that possible evils are real might have more of a responsibility to mourn than does the ordinary person, who does not realize this.
	majikthise.typepad.com /majikthise_/2004/06/a_continuation_.html (864 words)

	Current Projects
		One particularly hardy strand of possibilism – the modal realism championed by David Lewis – continues to attract both foes who seek to demonstrate its falsity (or at least stare its advocates into apostasy), and friends who hope to defend modal realism, or, when necessary, modify modal realism so as to avoid problematic objections.
		Although I am neither a foe nor friend of modal realism (but some of my best friends are!), like many, I continue to be fascinated by the doctrine.
		Here, I present a series of versions of modal realism such that each member of the series avoids a serious objection that plagues its predecessor; each theory is stronger than its ancestor.
	web.syr.edu /~krmcdani/CP.html (777 words)

	Pensum/læringskrav (FIL4400 - Høst 2003)
		Disputes about realism occupy a central position in the history of philosophy.
		In the past half century, analytic philosophy too has taken a serious interest in such disputes, and the traditional questions have been connected in deep and interesting ways with questions in the philosophies of language, logic, and mathematics.
		The first two topics, Abstract Objects and Modal Realism, are concerned with ontological realism (the view that there exist objects of certain metaphysically controversial kinds); the last two, Putnam’s Internal Realism and Dummett’s Anti-Realism, with truth-value realism (the view that certain ranges of sentences have determinate truth-values).
	www.uio.no /studier/emner/hf/ifikk/FIL4400/h03/pensumliste.xml (604 words)

	Amazon.ca: Books: On the Plurality of Worlds (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
		After putting forward the type of modal realism he favors, he answers numerous objections that have been raised against it.
		The include an insistence that everything must be actual; paradoxes akin to those that confront naive set theory; arguments that modal realism leads to inductive scepticism, or do disregard for prudence and morality; and finally, sheer incredulity at a theory that disagrees so badly with common opinion.
		Lewis grants the weight of the last objection, but takes it to be outweighted by the benefits to systematic theory that acceptance of modal realism brings.
	www.amazon.ca /exec/obidos/ASIN/0631224963 (1258 words)

	Anthony Newman: works in progress (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
		If modal realism of the sort defended by David Lewis is right, then the truth-conditions of ordinary modal talk can be clarified by explicit reference to non-actual things.
		I argue that that argument cuts deeper than past objections against modal realism, and consider how a similar semantical strategy might settle other longstanding ontological debates.
		A novel conclusion is to reject the tacit assumption that the past and future are as real as the present.
	www.mit.edu /~anth/worksinprogress.html (762 words)

	Bibliography of Nino Cocchiarella
		Realism, Mathematics and Modality, Hartry Field, Basil Blackwell Ltd., Oxford, 1989; review in International Studies in Philosophy, vol.
		Reviews, (Feb. 1986) of "Counterexample to Bowen's Theorem and Failures of Interpolation Theorem in Modal Logic", by Qi Ci Lii, in Kexuo Tongbao (English ed.) 29 (1984): 433-436.
		Reviews, (April 1986) of "Laws and Modal Realism", by R. Pargetter, in Philosophical Studies 46 (1984): 335-347.
	www.formalontology.it /cocchiarella_biblio.htm (5703 words)

	Ephilosopher :: Metaphysics and Epistemology :: Robert Adam's Indifference Objection to Lewis' Modal Realism (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
		It will not matter to reality as a whole how you decide — there will in any case be many just like you who decide one way and many who decide the other — but it still matters to you.” (Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds p.
		The problem with the Adams objection is that we are really only concerned about our moral conduct to the extent that we are causally responsible for it.
		Given modal realism, nothing we do will change the amount of evil or good there is spread throughout the worlds:
	www.ephilosopher.com /phpBB_14-action-viewtopic-topic-1760.html (1432 words)

	Modal Realism vs. MWI
		The double slit results had a "traditional" wave mechanics interpretation 75 years ago ("wave-particle duality"), and this remains a viable interpretation even today.
		In terms of topology, one might say full modal realism is the discrete (perhaps Zariski) topology, while MWI has more notions of closeness, overlap, etc. (I think this could be worked out, but I haven't.) Certainly after a time interval where decoherence occurs, the interaction between macroscopically different worlds is essentially zero.
		The next morning he buttonholed Baez and said "Braided monoidal categories are really cool" (I'm paraphrasing from memory).
	www.mail-archive.com /everything-list@eskimo.com/msg04029.html (1064 words)

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