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.

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.

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 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.

Persistence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristie Miller
Keyword(s):  
David Lewis ◽  
Stage Theory ◽  
Good Sense ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Time Section ◽  
Temporary Intrinsics ◽  
Over Time

We call the phenomenon of objects existing through time, persistence. Theories of persistence aim to spell out the conditions under which objects persist. A useful way to think about this task is to see that in order for an object to persist from one time to another, it needs to be that in some good sense the object that is located at the earlier time, is the same object as the object located at the later time. Competing theories of persistence can be thought of as offering different ways of understanding the sense in which an object located at one time is the same object as an object located at some other time. These different accounts are, in part, motivated by the need to reconcile four apparent truisms: (a) an object persists iff it exists at different times, and at each of those times what exists is numerically identical with what exists at every other one of those times; (b) persisting objects change their intrinsic properties over time; (c) x = y only if x and y share all of the same properties; and (d) no object instantiates incompatible properties. The tension between these four plausible claims is known as the problem of temporary intrinsics, and different attempts to solve the problem lead to different theories of persistence. Historically, there have been two main theories of persistence. The articulation of these theories can be traced to David Lewis, who distinguishes endurance from perdurance. The theory that says that objects persist by enduring is known as endurantism, and the theory that says that objects persist by perduring is known as perdurantism. Put somewhat roughly for now, endurantism is the view that objects persist by being wholly present at more than one time. Perdurantism is the view that objects persist by being partially present at more than one time. Section 1 considers these two theories of persistence in more detail, and then introduces two more recent views: exdurantism (also known as stage theory) and transdurantism. Section 2 considers how these four theories respond to the problem of temporary intrinsics.

Why Defend Humean Supervenience?

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (7) ◽  
pp. 387-406
Author(s):  
Siegfried Jaag Siegfried Jaag ◽  
Christian Loew Christian Loew ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Level Structure ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Humean Supervenience ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Fundamental Physics ◽  
Reductive Physicalism ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Fundamental Physical

Humean Supervenience (HS) is a metaphysical model of the world according to which all truths hold in virtue of nothing but the total spatiotemporal distribution of perfectly natural, intrinsic properties. David Lewis and others have worked out many aspects of HS in great detail. A larger motivational question, however, remains unanswered: As Lewis admits, there is strong evidence from fundamental physics that HS is false. What then is the purpose of defending HS? In this paper, we argue that the philosophical merit of HS is largely independent of whether it correctly represents the world’s fundamental structure. In particular, we show that insofar as HS is an apt model of the world’s higher-level structure, it thereby provides a powerful argument for reductive physicalism and explains otherwise opaque inferential relations. Recent criticism of HS on the grounds that it misrepresents fundamental physical reality is, therefore, beside the point.

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.

Structural Humility

2021 ◽  
Vol 88 (5) ◽  
pp. 860-870
Author(s):  
Cruz Austin Davis
Keyword(s):  
David Lewis ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Time Structure ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Space Time Structure

In this article I discuss various humility theses about individuals and intrinsic properties as discussed by authors such as David Lewis. I argue that we should accept a similar humility thesis about the world’s space-time structure regardless of which metaphysics of space-time we accept. I argue this undercuts some important motivations opting in for an ontic structural realist metaphysic.

Religious Studies of Democratic Ukraine

2001 ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Anatolii M. Kolodnyi
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Integral System ◽  
The World

Ukrainian religious studies have deep roots. We find the elements of it in the written descendants of the writings of Kievan Rus. From the prince's time, the universal way of vision, understanding and appreciation of the world for many Ukrainian thinkers becomes their own religious experiences. The main purpose of their works is not the desire to create a certain integral system of theological knowledge, but the desire to convey their personal religious-minded perception of the divine nature, harmony, beauty and perfection of God created the world.

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