Does the actual world actually exist?

1993 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul McNamara
Keyword(s):  
Actual World

Maximal God and Arguments Against Perfect Being Theism I

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yujin Nagasawa
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Concept Of God

This chapter considers existing arguments against perfect being theism, classifying them into three types: (i) arguments that purport to show the internal incoherence of God’s individual properties, (ii) arguments that purport to show the mutual inconsistency between God’s properties, and (iii) arguments that purport to show the mutual inconsistency between the set of God’s properties and a certain fact about the actual world. The chapter then develops a radically new and economical defence of perfect being theism, a defence that appeals to the maximal concept of God. This defence, it is argued, undercuts nearly all the arguments of the three types at once.

Presence, Environment, and Sound and the Role of Imagination

2019 ◽  
pp. 667-681
Author(s):  
Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
Keyword(s):  
Computer Games ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Actual World ◽  
Sensory Input ◽  
The World ◽  
Visual Dimension ◽  
The Creation ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
Selection Of

Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard addresses the role of sound in the creation of presence in virtual and actual worlds. He argues that imagination is a central part of the generation and selection of perceptual hypotheses—models of the world in which we can act—that emerge from what Grimshaw-Aagaard calls the “exo-environment” (the sensory input) and the “endo-environment” (the cognitive input). Grimshaw-Aagaard further divides the exo-environment into a primarily auditory and a primarily visual dimension and he deals with the actual world of his own apartment and the virtual world of first-person-shooter computer games in order to exemplify how we perceptually construct an environment that allows for the creation of presence.

scholarly journals A Sensibilist Explanation of Imaginative Resistance

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Nils Franzén
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Recent Discussion ◽  
Personal Taste ◽  
Predicates Of Personal Taste ◽  
Imaginative Resistance ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Evaluative Terms ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article discusses why it is the case that we refuse to accept strange evaluative claims as being true in fictions, even though we are happy to go along with other types of absurdities in such contexts. For instance, we would refuse to accept the following statement as true, even in the context of a fiction: (i) In killing her baby, Giselda did the right thing; after all, it was a girl. This article offers a sensibilist diagnosis of this puzzle, inspired by an observation first made by David Hume. According to sensibilism, the way we feel about things settles their evaluative properties. Thus, when confronted with a fictional scenario where the configuration of non-evaluative facts and properties is relevantly similar to the actual world, we refuse to go along with evaluative properties being instantiated according to a different pattern. It is the attitudes we hold in the actual world that fix the extension of evaluative terms, even in nonactual worlds. When engaging with a fiction, we (to some extent) leave our beliefs about what the world is like behind, while taking our emotional attitudes with us into the fiction. To substantiate this diagnosis, this paper outlines a sensibilist semantics for evaluative terms based on recent discussion regarding predicates of personal taste, and explains how, together with standard assumptions about the nature of fictional discourse, it makes the relevant predictions with respect to engagement with fictions.

scholarly journals God and the Playpen: On the Feasibility of Morally Better Worlds

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Cheryl K. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Actual World ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Horrendous Evil ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Free Will Defense ◽  
Better Than

According to the free will defense, God cannot create a world with free creatures, and hence a world with moral goodness, without allowing for the possibility of evil. David Lewis points out that any free will defense must address the “playpen problem”: why didn’t God allow creatures the freedom required for moral goodness, while intervening to ensure that all evil-doing is victimless? More recently, James Sterba has revived the playpen problem by arguing that an omnipotent and benevolent God would have intervened to prevent significant and especially horrendous evil. I argue that it is possible, at least, that such divine intervention would have backfired, and that any attempt to create a world that is morally better than this one would have resulted in a world that is morally worse. I conclude that the atheologian should instead attack the free will defense at its roots: either by denying that the predetermination of our actions is incompatible with our freely per-forming them, or by denying that the actual world—a world with both moral good and evil—is more valuable than a world without any freedom at all.

Legal Worlds and Legal Narratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Aaron J. Walayat ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Reflective Function ◽  
Moral Communication ◽  
Legal Narratives ◽  
Reflexive Function ◽  
The Way

More than a simple command of a sovereign, law is a form of moral communication, something that helps constitute the way we conceive of ourselves, our community, and our culture. In this essay, I argue that law is a form of “world projection,” a way for human communities to use law as an aesthetic way to understand themselves. Within this legal world are narratives that present an idealized reflection of our world. Law has two functions, a reflective function, in which it mirrors the actual world and a reflexive function, in which it corrects undesirable aspects of the actual world. It is through these functions that law describes the narratives within legal relationships in order to say something real and important about those corresponding relationships in the actual world.

The missing mass

Physics World ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 25v-25v
Author(s):  
Chris Atkins
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Maximum Height ◽  
World Record ◽  
Missing Mass ◽  
Theoretical Maximum

In response to the Lateral Thoughts quiz “Sporting chance”, in which question 8 asked for a rough estimate of the theoretical maximum height a pole vaulter could jump, and why the actual world record is slightly above this.

scholarly journals Revisiting Videogame Logic: Impossible Storyworlds in the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster

Panoptikum ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 155-167
Author(s):  
Warren Buckland
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Source Code ◽  
The Third ◽  
Christopher Nolan ◽  
Logic Structures

This paper demonstrates how two logics (narrative and videogame) function in a select number of contemporary blockbuster films. The paper is divided into three sections: The first outlines narrative and videogame logics; the second presents examples from Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) and Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011) to demonstrate how videogame logic structures the events in each film; and the third discusses how these logics create specific storyworlds (imaginary worlds distinct from the actual world) that are unnatural and/or impossible.

scholarly journals Enseñanza clínica en enfermería: escenario del aprendizaje y sus actores

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Norma Ivette Beltran Lugo ◽  
Betsy Flores Atilano ◽  
Dulce María Guillén Cadena
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Clinical Teaching ◽  
Clinical Settings ◽  
Clinical Practices ◽  
Continuous Formation ◽  
Great Responsibility ◽  
Health Institutions ◽  
Personnel Needs ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Sobre Todo

<div>La ense&ntilde;anza se concibe como la tarea m&aacute;s peculiar de la escuela, cuyas funciones educativas deben estructurarse (P&eacute;rez G&oacute;mez, 1992) en torno a dos funciones. El acto de ense&ntilde;ar no es responsabilidad totalmente del docente universitario, sino que involucra al personal operativo de las instituciones de salud. La ense&ntilde;anza cl&iacute;nica es el momento donde se tiene contacto con el mundo real y los diferentes ambientes que se generan para la construcci&oacute;n de nuevos h&aacute;bitos profesionales, el desarrollo de la empat&iacute;a con la disciplina y hasta el gusto de ser enfermero. La problem&aacute;tica que tenemos actualmente es que a veces el personal de Enfermer&iacute;a da por hecho que los y las estudiantes ya tienen los conocimientos pero sobre todo las habilidades pr&aacute;cticas para ejecutar intervenciones que implican gran responsabilidad, pero cuando la alumna demuestra que no tiene esas habilidades es desplazada y limitada a la observaci&oacute;n. El profesorado debe tener una formaci&oacute;n continua y tambi&eacute;n debe salir a hacer pr&aacute;cticas cl&iacute;nicas para que de esta forma no pierda las habilidades y destrezas en la ejecuci&oacute;n de diversos procedimientos de Enfermer&iacute;a. Aunque existe el programa de estancias cl&iacute;nicas para profesores, &eacute;stos deben ser comprometidos a ejecutarlas independientemente de que laboren en alg&uacute;n otro lugar, ya que de &eacute;sta forma se pueden actualizar en las nuevas tecnolog&iacute;as del cuidado y tendr&aacute;n herramientas muy &uacute;tiles durante su ense&ntilde;anza.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Teaching is conceived as the most peculiar task of the school, which educative functions must be structured (P&eacute;rez G&oacute;mez, 1992) around two functions. The act of teaching isn&rsquo;t the universitarian teacher&rsquo;s responsibility completely, but also the health institutions&rsquo; personnel&acute;s. Clinical teaching is the moment when contact is had with the actual world and the different environments created to construct new professional habits, development of empathy and even the joy of being a nurse. The issue we currently have is that sometimes nursing personnel take for granted that students already have all the knowledge, but mostly all the practical abilities to perform interventions that imply great responsibility, but when the student shows the lack those skills, they&rsquo;re set aside and limited to observation only. Teaching personnel needs to have a continuous formation and they also have to do clinical practices so this way they won&acute;t lose the abilities and dexterities on the execution of different nursing procedures. Even though there&rsquo;s the clinical settings program for teachers, they have to be committed to execute it, whether they work or not at other place, so this way caring technologies can be updated and they&rsquo;ll have very useful tools for teaching.</div></div><div><br /></div>

Philosophy in France

Philosophy ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 10 (39) ◽  
pp. 355-359
Author(s):  
M. Bergson
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Actual World ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Food And Drink

It is precision, M. Bergson suggests in his last book,1that has most been lacking in philosophy. Imprecision declares itself in two respects: philosophical systems of the past apply indifferently to many imaginary worlds, and so allows this actual world to slip through their meshes; and they ignore the sense or direction evinced in the order and process of this actual world. Such systems “do not fit the reality in which we live, but are too large for it. Any of them would apply equally well to a world in which plants, animals, and men did not exist, or one in which men went without food and drink and did not sleep or dream or rave, to a world in which men were born decrepit and suckled in old age … Such systems of conceptions are so abstract, consequently so vast, that they can be made to hold everything possible alongside the real”. That we should interpret them always with an eye on this actual world and so regard them as being literal transcriptions of the actual is a witness to the practical bias of our thinking and a quite arbitrary reading of them. Contrasted with these highly abstract systems, M. Bergson claims that his own explanation “adheres to its object” and leaves no gap in which an alternative one could find foothold.

The World Essence

Dialogue ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bigelow
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Actual World ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Joint Paper ◽  
Essential Properties ◽  
The World ◽  
Natural Necessity

Recently, Brian Ellis came up with a neat and novel idea about laws of nature, which at first I misunderstood. Then I participated, with Brian Ellis and Caroline Lierse, in writing a joint paper, “The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature” (Ellis, Bigelow and Lierse, forthcoming). In this paper, the Ellis idea was formulated in a different way from that in which I had originally interpreted it. Little weight was placed on possible worlds or individual essences. Much weight rested on natural kinds. I thought Ellis to be suggesting that laws of nature attribute essential properties to one grand individual, The World. In fact, Ellis is hostile towards individual essences for any individuals at all, including The World. He is comfortable only with essential properties of kinds, rather than individuals. The Ellis conjecture was that laws of nature attribute essential properties to the natural kind of which the actual world is one (and presumably the only) member.

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