scholarly journals Necessitism, Contingentism, and Lewisian Modal Realism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Nencha
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Modal Realism ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
Restricted Quantification

AbstractNecessitism 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 too. The paper argues that, granted the assumptions that lead to interpret the Lewisian as a necessitist, she can preserve contingentist intuitions, by genuinely agreeing with the folk that existence is contingent. This is not just the uncontroversial claim that the Lewisian, as a result of the prevalence of restricted quantification in counterpart theoretic regimentations of natural language, can agree with the folk while disagreeing with them in the metaphysical room. Rather, this is the claim that it is in the metaphysical room that the Lewisian can endorse the intuitions lying behind contingentism.

Lewis' Indexical Argument for World-Relative Actuality

Dialogue ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Gale
Keyword(s):  
David Lewis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The Other ◽  
Abstract Entity ◽  
Modal Realism ◽  
Possible World ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Reductio Ad Absurdum ◽  
Critical Scrutiny

David Lewis has shocked the philosophical community with his original version of extreme modal realism according to which “every way that a world could possibly be is a way that some world is”. Logical Space is a plenitude of isolated physical worlds, each being the actualization of some way in which a world could be, that bear neither spatiotemporal nor causal relations to each other. Lewis has given independent, converging arguments for this. One is the argument from the indexicality of actuality, the other an elaborate cost-benefit argument of the inference-to-the-best explanation sort to the effect that a systematic analysis of a number of concepts, including modality, causality, propositions and properties, fares better under his theory than under any rival one that takes a possible world to be either a linguistic entity or an ersatz abstract entity such as a maximal compossible set of properties, propositions or states of affairs. Lewis' legion of critics have confined themselves mostly to attempts at a reductio ad absurdum of his theory or to objections to his various analyses. The indexical argument, on the other hand, has not been subject to careful critical scrutiny. It is the purpose of this paper to show that this argument cannot withstand such scrutiny. Its demise, however, leaves untouched his argument from the explanatory superiority for his extreme modal realism.

Internal and External Objects of Cognition

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-130
Author(s):  
Michael Ayers
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
External Objects ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Task

Detailed analysis is conducted of the different constructions in which ‘know’, ‘believe’, ‘see’, and cognate verbs appear in ordinary or natural language, of their functions and of the relations and differences between them: e.g. noun-clauses of the form ‘that P’ serve different purposes after each of these classes of verb, partly reflected in the proposition–fact distinction—although ‘facts’ are ontologically unsuited to be what it is in the world we know. Some relevant views of Timothy Williamson (e.g. ‘e=k’) are discussed. The emphasis in current epistemology on the ‘know/see that P’ construction is criticized—no construction, and no use of the term ‘evidence’, is philosophically best, since it is no accident that we have them all. The philosophical task is to understand how they work together—the footprints in language of our cognitive relation to reality, manifestations of what knowledge, belief, and perception are.

Meaning, Modality, and Possible Worlds Semantics

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Soames
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Classical Logic ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Formal Languages ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Counterfactual Conditionals ◽  
Richard Montague ◽  
Close Parallel

This chapter begins with a discussion of Kripke-style possible worlds semantics. It considers one of the most important applications of possible worlds semantics, the account of counterfactual conditionals given in Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis. It then goes on to examine the work of Richard Montague. Montague specified syntactic rules that generate English, or English-like, structures directly, while pairing each such rule with a truth-theoretic rule interpreting it. This close parallel between syntax and semantics is what makes the languages of classical logic so transparently tractable, and what they were designed to embody. Montague's bold contention is that we do not have to replace natural language natural languages with formal substitutes to achieve such transparency. The same techniques employed to create formal languages can be used to describe natural languages in mathematically revealing ways.

Reply to Cameron

2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL SHEEHY
Keyword(s):  
David Lewis ◽  
Abstract Entity ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Modal Realism ◽  
Divine Nature

AbstractRoss Cameron has argued that the modal realism of David Lewis furnishes the theist with the resources to explain divine necessity. Cameron is successful in identifying two theistic strategies, but neither is attractive in light of a commitment to modal realism. The first theistic strategy is to treat God as an abstract entity in the same way that the modal realist treats pure sets. This is undermotivated in light of the nominalistic spirit of modal realism. The second strategy is to regard God as enjoying trans-world identity because the divine nature can possess no accidental intrinsic properties. This approach raises a problem of how one is to understand the notion of actuality.

Classical theism and modal realism are incompatible

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHAD VANCE
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Counterpart Theory ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Modal Realism ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Necessary Being ◽  
Special Case

AbstractThe classical conception of God is that of a necessary being. On a possible worlds semantics, this entails that God exists at every possible world. According to the modal realist account of David Lewis, possible worlds are understood to be real, concrete worlds – no different in kind from the actual world. But, modal realism is equipped to accommodate the existence of a necessary being in only one of three ways: (1) By way of counterpart theory, or (2) by way of a special case of trans-world identity for causally inert necessary beings (e.g. pure sets), or else (3) causally potent ones which lack accidental intrinsic properties. I argue that each of these three options entails unacceptable consequences – (1) and (2) are incompatible with theism, and (3) is incompatible with modal realism. I conclude that (at least) one of these views is false.

scholarly journals The Metaphysics of Theism: A Classical and Neo-Classical Synthesis

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 967
Author(s):  
Joshua Reginald Sijuwade
Keyword(s):  
David Lewis ◽  
Modal Realism ◽  
Ontological Pluralism ◽  
Classical Theism

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 this notion can be successfully answered.

SELF-CONCEPTION AND PERSONAL IDENTITY: REVISITING PARFIT AND LEWIS WITH AN EYE ON THE GRIP OF THE UNITY REACTION

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin Belzer
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Simon Blackburn ◽  
David Velleman ◽  
First Person Perspective

Derek Parfit's “reductionist” account of personal identity (including the rejection of anything like a soul) is coupled with the rejection of a commonsensical intuition of essential self-unity, as in his defense of the counter-intuitive claim that “identity does not matter.” His argument for this claim is based on reflection on the possibility of personal fission. To the contrary, Simon Blackburn claims that the “unity reaction” to fission has an absolute grip on practical reasoning. Now David Lewis denied Parfit's claim that reductionism contravenes common sense, so I revisit the debate between Parfit and Lewis, showing why Parfit wins it. Is reductionism about persons then inherently at odds with the unity reaction? Not necessarily; David Velleman presents a reductionist theory according to which fission does not conflict with the unity reaction. Nonetheless, relying on the distinction between person level descriptions of first-person states and the first-person perspective itself, I argue that Velleman's theory does not eliminate fission-based conflict with the unity reaction.

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