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Topic: Possible Worlds

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	Possible world - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		We note that every proposition is either true or false at any given possible world; then the modal status of a proposition is understood in terms of the worlds in which it is true and worlds in which it is false.
		The idea of possible worlds is most commonly attributed to Gottfried Leibniz, who spoke of possible worlds as ideas in the mind of God and (in)famously used the notion to argue that our actually created world must be "the best of all possible worlds".
		Possible worlds theory in literary studies uses concepts from possible-world logic and applies them to worlds that are created by fictional texts.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Possible_worlds (1213 words)

	Encyclopedia: Possible worlds (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		We discuss some ideas about what "possible worlds" might be, partly to elucidate the character of logical necessity, and partly as an approach to metaphysics and the philosophy of science.
		Since a possible world must contain all that we need to determine the truth value of sentences in our languages, it is necessary to admit that a possible world must identify for every name in the language the entity in the world which it names.
		In this account, we replace the possibilist idea of merely possible worlds with that of a certain type of state of affairs (alternatively, a certain type of proposition) which exists but fails to obtain (alternatively, fails to be true).
	www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/Possible-worlds (409 words)

	Many worlds and possible worlds in literature and art - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		It should be noted that whereas in science fiction a 'world' conventionally means a planet, the 'worlds' referred to by the Possible Worlds theory are more closely analogous to possible alternate universes in science fiction.
		The concept of possible worlds dates back to a least Leibniz who in his Théodicée tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds.
		Fanciful illustrations of many worlds and possible worlds are given by science fiction stories in which individuals are capable of viewing events on alternate paths of the universe or even traveling between alternate worlds or parallel universes; see, for instance, "Sliders".
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Many_worlds_and_possible_worlds_in_literature_and_art (2458 words)

	ipedia.com: Possible worlds Article (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Similarly for any other contingent fact: there are possible worlds in which it rained today and possible worlds in which it didn't; possible worlds in which I went to a dance on Friday, possible worlds in which I stayed in, and possible worlds in which I had never even been born in the first place.
		If that possible world is the nearest possible world (in the right respects) where the scandal hadn't broke, then the statement is true.
		If there is a nearer possible world (in the right respects) where the scandal hadn't broke, but he still lost the election, then that is reason to take the counterfactual as false.
	www.ipedia.com /possible_worlds.html (578 words)

	A Persisting Problem For Fictionalism About Possible Worlds: A Supplement to Modal Fictionalism
		The point of fictionalism about possible worlds is that if it is successful, it enables one to use the conceptual resources of possible-world semantics without needing the ontological baggage that realism about such worlds carries.
		Now, it is not true of the actual world that there is a king of France, and it is not true of any of the (supposedly fictional) possible worlds that PW is false there (after all, in the Lewis story, the Lewis story (or PW) holds at every world).
		Possibility seems to be the same thing in both the sentences "Possibly PW is false" and "Possibly Phlogiston Theory is false": merely using the word "metalanguage" does not provide explanatory power.
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/fictionalism-modal/supplement1.html (1530 words)

	Senses of "World" / Norman Swartz / Dept. of Philosophy / Simon Fraser University / 1997
		A slightly broader sense is found in such expressions as "the prehistoric world", or "the world of the Buddhist", or "the world of the fly-fisher".
		In the preceding section, to cite just one case, I claimed that this (the actual) world is a world in which a creature's eating carrots is not guaranteed to reverse that creature's aging process.
		Indeed, using this concept of possible world we will be able to give a powerful and intuitive definition of implication (entailment): "A statement P implies a statement Q" means "Q is true in all possible worlds in which P is true".
	www.sfu.ca /philosophy/swartz/senses_of_world.htm (3044 words)

	David Lewis: Modal Realism
		Possible worlds cannot be reduced to something more basic -- they are irreducible entities in their own right.
		Possible worlds are unified by the spatiotemporal interrelations of their parts; possible worlds are spatiotemporally isolated from each other.
		Is a Newtonian world unified by the spatiotemporal inter relatedness of its constituents?
	users.ox.ac.uk /~worc0337/modal.realism.html (2488 words)

	Virtual Recentering: Computer Games and Possible Worlds Theory by Jan Van Looy
		Possible worlds logic is a theoretical framework introduced in the 1960s by Saul Kripke in order to be able to assess the truth-value in counterfactual statements (if...
		Possible worlds theory is a logical framework primarily devised to evaluate the truth-value in counterfactual statements, and has consequentially been used to describe the functioning of fictional recentering.
		A reader is invited to step into a possible world where the author, or rather her substitute speaker, recounts certain events that have taken or are taking place in the textual world.
	www.imageandnarrative.be /tulseluper/vanlooy.htm (6854 words)

	Ebon Musings: All Possible Worlds
		In the present day, though a relative few in the industrialized world live in comparative luxury, many millions more around the world are still desperately poor, still largely uneducated, still lacking in the basic necessities of life, and still besieged by war, disease, famine and drought.
		In brief, it seeks to establish that the existence of evil in the world is logically incompatible with the existence of a benevolent God, and that it is more reasonable to conclude that God does not exist than that he does exist but does nothing to stop evil.
		How modern members of these traditions choose to reconcile their beliefs with the state of the world is up to them; the remainder of this article will discuss the problem of evil as it relates to traditional monotheism and show that the proffered solutions are inadequate.
	www.ebonmusings.org /atheism/allpossibleworlds.html (7542 words)

	MainFrame: Possible Worlds
		Restricting the notion of possible world to interpretations which are consistent with the intended meaning of abstract constants yields a more general notion of necessity which fits better with both the analytic and the a priori.
		By allowing the semantics of "non-logical" constants to be built into the notion of a possible world the resulting concept of necessity is broadened to something closer to the broad notions of analyticity which allow all information about the semantics of the language to come into play.
		The natural laws of a possible point mass newtonian world are modelled by a function which maps a model state to a set of triples of differential coordinates, one for each point mass in the state.
	www.rbjones.com /rbjpub/philos/metap/metap004.htm (1798 words)

	Two Caricatures, II: (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		When Leibniz maintained that the solution to the problem of evil was that this was the Best of All Possible Worlds, the almost universal reaction was that his theory combined the lack of rationality exhibited by Pascal's Wager with a repulsive failure of compassion possible only in an unfeeling Enlightenment mathematician.
		That was the point of objections to "deep ecology" based on its quietism in the face of possible asteroid strikes, ice ages or HIV mutations, which are perfectly natural, and from the point of view of the universe, may well clear the earth for a wealth of exciting new evolutionary opportunities.
		World views with a sense of the seriousness of evil to humans but without Gods seem, on reflection, to be in short supply.
	www.maths.unsw.edu.au /~jim/caric2.html (4564 words)

	Reviews: November 1998
		Possible Worlds of the Fantastic: The Rise of the Paranormal in Literature.
		Possible Worlds of the Fantastic is a modest but useful modal study of the genre of the fantastic, based on Traill’s dissertation.
		Her concern is with the different ways in which authors conceive of the opposition between the "natural" world and impossible worlds, and the only motivations she considers are the accepted notions of this relationship in the historical cultures in which the writers operated.
	www.depauw.edu /sfs/birs/bir76.htm (12850 words)

	Leibniz: Harmony
		Where Spinoza saw the world as a single comprehensive substance like Descartes's extended matter, then, Leibniz supposed that the world is composed of many discrete particles, each of which is simple, active, and independent of every other, like Descartes's minds or souls.
		The world in which we live, then, is but one among the infinitely many possible worlds that might have existed.
		In a more lofty tone, Leibniz declared that a benevolent god would choose to create whatever possible world contained the smallest amount of evil; hence (in a phrase that would later be mocked by Voltaire) this is "the best of all possible worlds," according to Leibniz.
	www.philosophypages.com /hy/4j.htm (2112 words)

	The Public Square: A Continuing Survey of Religion and Public Life (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		In the real world of Thomas Sowell, inequality is the name of history's game, and we should not let sentimentality about "cultural identity," "roots," and "self-esteem" obscure that fact.
		It is difficult for us to imagine the despotic control at that time exercised over the whole faculties, whether physical or mental, of our ancestors, and it requires some effort to picture to ourselves the revivifying effect that must have attended the spreading of the reformed doctrines.
		The well-being of the nonhuman world, including animals, is deeply dependent upon our continuing to accent the singularity of human dignity, a dignity that entails responsibility for all of God's creation.
	www.firstthings.com /ftissues/ft9504/public.html (8892 words)

	Possible Worlds in Literary Theory - Cambridge University Press
		The concept of possible worlds, originally introduced in philosophical logic, has recently gained interdisciplinary influence; it proves to be a productive tool when borrowed by literary theory to explain the notion of fictional worlds.
		In this book Ruth Ronen develops a comparative reading of the use of possible worlds in philosophy and in literary theory, and offers an analysis of the way the concept contributes to our understanding of fictionality and the structure and ontology of fictional worlds.
		The possibility of fictional worlds: possible worlds between the disciplines; 3.
	books.cambridge.org /0521456487.htm (173 words)

	Possible Worlds Pragmatics of fiction (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		A narrative state is not simply the extension of a set of propositions in a unique domain, but a constellation of possible worlds linked to each other by various types of relations.
		The modal system of narrative is shown to comprise an actual world, or factual domain, surrounded by the "possible worlds" of the characters mental representations.
		Narratively signficant events are those that create or resolve conflict, by bringing one of the possible worlds of a character’s domain either closer or farther from the actual world.
	lamar.colostate.edu /~pwryan/abstracts4.htm (363 words)

	Currents in Electronic Literacy (Spring 1999): "Literature On-Line: The Best of All Possible Worlds?"
		While in the best of all possible worlds, good poetry will be broadcast throughout the workplace, that condition has not yet, I think, obtained.
		And many campuses are exploring the possibility of developing lease-purchase programs that would give each student a top-of-the-line PC when he or she enters the university.
		Those worlds are the industrial, the business, the commercial and professional worlds into which many our literature students will inevitably move upon graduation.
	www.cwrl.utexas.edu /currents/spr99/humphrey.html (2302 words)

	The Worst of All Possible Worlds?
		If this is the best of all possible worlds, then God is a sadistic pig hardly deserving of our adoration.
		According to CIA statistics (CIA World Factbook) in July 1996 the World population was 5.77 billion.
		In 1996 0.9 percent of the world population died.
	www.theology.edu /journal/volume3/worst.htm (608 words)

	Possible Worlds Semantics for Belief Sentences
		It cannot denote the necessarily false proposition either, because first of all on all possible worlds theory of belief nobody believes the necessarily false proposition, and if so the first premise cannot be true.
		But suppose that in possible world c, the first celestial body that appears in the morning is Mars and that Venus is the first celestial body appearing the evening.
		Recall that the primary intension of a concept is supposed to specify what it takes for something at a possible world to be the referent of the concept if that world were actual.
	www.hku.hk /philodep/joelau/phil/PossibleWorlds.htm (3186 words)

	An Account of Abstract Possible Worlds: A Supplement to Actualism
		A state of affairs w is a world just in case it is possible that w includes all and only states of affairs that obtain.
		Thus, in this first stage of the actualist treatment of modality, ordinary possibility claims are analyzed in terms of actually existing states of affairs.
		A possible world is a state of affairs that could be such that it includes all and only states of affairs that obtain.
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/actualism/possible-worlds.html (673 words)

	The Best of All Possible Worlds, or The Only Game in Town? - P.M.Lawrence
		The world has speeded up too fast - even for the winners." While true, this misleads by suggesting that this is a mere psychological effect.
		Granted, we in the developed world have a technological edge of sorts, but it is not sustainable.
		(Disraeli also wrote of the possible desirability of "potato grounds", which survived into the allotment movement and was an example of just such a non-cash subsistence subsidy.) Although this only happens at the bottom, in any country it works through the local price structure to give comparably lower rates than we can offer throughout.
	www.spectacle.org /0901/lawrence.html (1548 words)

	Ziggy's Video Realm: Tilda Swinton in Possible Worlds (2000) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Only he is aware of his shifts between worlds, and in each one, he is drawn the same woman, Joyce (Tilda Swinton, The Deep End), though she has a different personality and a different life history each time.
		Possible Worlds builds upon a concept which in itself in rooted in classic science fiction - the notion of parallel universes that coexist one alongside another - but the movie itself cannot be properly classed as science fiction.
		Possible Worlds is one of those movies that completely envelops the audience, drawing the viewers completely into the world of the screen for ninety-odd minutes to the exclusion of the rest of the world.
	www.reelcriticism.com /ziggyrealm/reviews/possibleworlds.html (1215 words)

	Possible Worlds (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		5.2.1 “The actual world” means “the world in which I exist”.
		Section 6 The possibility of non-spatio-temporally related co-actual entities.
		Section 7 Cardinality and the “set” of all possible worlds.
	www.georgetown.edu /faculty/ap85/papers/PhilThesis.html (226 words)

	Possible Worlds Semantics
		The possible worlds model for logics of knowledge and belief was originally proposed by Hintikka [Hintikka, 1962], and is now most commonly formulated in a normal modal logic using the techniques developed by Kripke [Kripke, 1963]
		The next step is to show how possible worlds may be incorporated into the semantic framework of a logic.
		The worlds in the model are interpreted as epistemic alternatives, the accessibility relation defines what the alternatives are from any given world.
	www.csc.liv.ac.uk /%7Emjw/pubs/ker95/subsection3_2_3.html (1242 words)

	Possible Worlds (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Fiction is commonly viewed as imaginative discourse, or as discourse concerning an alternative possible world.
		This means that we will project upon the world created by the text everything we know about the real world, and that we will make only those adjustments that are imposed by the text.
		It is argued that proposals regarding the impersonal narrator as a normal but unknown human being fail on pragmatic grounds, while proposals denying the existence of a speaker in impersonal narration (such as Ann Banfield's "non-narrator theory") fail on logical grounds.
	lamar.colostate.edu /~pwryan/abstracts3.htm (401 words)

	Possible Worlds (2000) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Possible Worlds explores themes of the mind in a science-fiction setting.
		A man seems all knowing at the start of the film, and impresses his interviewers by quickly calculating the solution to several complex problems posed to him, all without a calculator.
		He also explores a relationship with the same woman, who is strikingly different in each of the parallel worlds.
	us.imdb.com /Title?0222293 (372 words)

	Guardian Unlimited Books \| LRB essay \| The Bess of all possible worlds
		Philip Sidney in The Lady of May, the little entertainment he staged in 1578 at Leicester's park and gardens of Wanstead, went so far as to impose an unscripted speaking part on the Queen, presumably without warning, forcing her to adjudicate between two fictional rival suitors.
		Elizabeth, who reputedly once declared that princes were actors who stood on a stage in sight of all the world, not only took such impromptu performances in her stride but handled them brilliantly.
		When Ben Jonson tried it in 1599, at the very end of Every Man out of His Humour at the Globe, many (as he had to admit) "seem'd not to relish it" - although it was a non-speaking part and highly complimentary to the Queen - and it had to be withdrawn.
	books.guardian.co.uk /lrb/articles/0,6109,994131,00.html (2212 words)

	Re: facts of reality, context, possible worlds from pat hayes on 2002-12-07 (www-rdf-interest@w3.org from December 2002)
		What it probably does is give a phrase which is sufficient to identify the corresponding concept in the mind of a competent human reader, but all such readers bring to bear an incredible amount of information which is not stated explicitly in the dictionary or even in an encyclopedia.
		Claiming to be able to reason effectively in a language with the expressive power of English is a very large claim, and one that I am afraid I cannot take seriously.
		If you could do this, you would have solved the central AI problem; and if you have done that, then the world is your oyster.
	lists.w3.org /Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2002Dec/0032.html (981 words)

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