Ontological Advantages

2020 ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Amie L. Thomasson
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Grounding Problem ◽  
Theodore Sider ◽  
Modal Normativism

This chapter aims to make clear the ontological consequences of adopting a modal normativist position. By combining normativism with the easy approach to ontology, we can see that modal normativism gives us a form of simple realism, according to which there are modal facts, properties, and even possible worlds, in the only sense that has sense. Such entities are not, however, “posited” as truthmakers that are supposed to “explain” what “makes our modal claims true.” But although the normativist accepts that there are modal facts and properties, the view also brings ontological advantages, avoiding ontological problems that plague traditional realist views, including placement problems and the grounding problem. The normativist view is also compared here to the forms of “classificatory conventionalism” advocated by Ross Cameron and Theodore Sider.

Norms and Necessity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amie L. Thomasson
Keyword(s):  
Special Form ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Philosophical Debates ◽  
Modal Normativism

This book develops a new approach to understanding our claims about what is metaphysically necessary or possible: modal normativism. While claims about what is metaphysically necessary or possible have long played a central role in metaphysics and other areas of philosophy, such claims are traditionally thought of as aiming to describe a special kind of modal fact or property, or perhaps facts about other possible worlds. But that assumption leads to difficult ontological, epistemological, and methodological puzzles. Should we accept that there are modal facts or properties, or other possible worlds? If so, what could these things be? How could we come to know what the modal facts or properties are? How can we resolve philosophical debates about what is necessary or possible? The normativist rejects the assumption that modal claims aim to describe modal features or possible worlds, arguing instead that they serve as useful ways of conveying, reasoning with, and renegotiating semantic rules and their consequences. By dropping the descriptivist assumption, the normativist is able to unravel the notorious ontological problems of modality, and provide a clear and plausible story about how we can come to know what is metaphysically necessary or possible. Most importantly, this approach helps demystify philosophical methodology. For we are able to see that resolving metaphysical modal questions does not require a special form of philosophical insight or intuition. Instead, it requires nothing more mysterious than empirical knowledge, conceptual mastery, and an ability to explicitly convey and renegotiate semantic rules.

Combining the Best of Two Possible Worlds

1991 ◽  
Vol 36 (12) ◽  
pp. 1057-1058
Author(s):  
Marvin R. Goldfried ◽  
Douglas A. Vakoch
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds

Multiple Strands and Possible Worlds

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-61
Author(s):  
Ruth Perlmutter
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds

The Failure of Conceptual Analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer McKitrick
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics ◽  
Conditional Statements ◽  
Reductive Analysis

Dispositions are often regarded with suspicion. Consequently, some philosophers try to semantically reduce disposition ascriptions to sentences containing only non-dispositional vocabulary. Typically, reductionists attempt to analyze disposition ascriptions in terms of conditional statements. These conditional statements, like other modal claims, are often interpreted in terms of possible worlds semantics. However, conditional analyses are subject to a number of problems and counterexamples, including random coincidences, void satisfaction, masks, antidotes, mimics, altering, and finks. Some analyses fail to reduce disposition ascriptions to non-modal vocabulary. If reductive analysis of disposition ascriptions fails, then perhaps there can be metaphysical reduction of dispositions without semantic reduction. However, the reductionist still owes us an account of what makes disposition ascriptions true. But to posit a causal power for every unreduced dispositional predicate is an overreaction to the failure of conceptual analysis.

Is There Life in Possible Worlds?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Machine Design ◽  
Lagrangian Mechanics ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Search Spaces ◽  
Dimensional Modeling ◽  
Lower Dimensional

Scientists have developed various collections of specialized possibilities to serve as search spaces in which excessive reliance upon speculative forms of lower dimensional modeling or other unwanted details can be skirted. Two primary examples are discussed: the search spaces of machine design and the virtual variations utilized within Lagrangian mechanics. Contemporary appeals to “possible worlds” attempt to imbed these localized possibilities within fully enunciated universes. But not all possibilities are made alike and these reductive schemes should be resisted, on the grounds that they render the utilities of everyday counterfactuals and “possibility” talk incomprehensible. The essay also discusses whether Wittgenstein’s altered views in his Philosophical Investigations reflect similar concerns.

Pythagorean Women Philosophers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorota M. Dutsch
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
First Century ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Female Voices ◽  
Grant Agency ◽  
Women Philosophers ◽  
Historical Accounts

Modern scholarly accounts of Greek philosophical history usually exclude women. And yet, from Dixaearchus of Messana to Diogenes Laertius, classical writers record the names of women philosophers from various schools. What is more, pseudonymous treatises and letters (likely dating after the first century CE) articulate the teachings of Pythagorean women. How can this literature inform our understanding of Greek intellectual history? To take these texts at face value would be naïve; to reject them, narrow-minded. This book is a deep examination of the literary tradition surrounding female Pythagoreans; it envisions the tradition as a network of texts that does not represent female philosophers but enacts their role in Greek culture. Part I, “Portraits,” assembles and contextualizes excerpts from historical accounts and wisdom literature. Part II, “Impersonations,” analyzes pseudonymous treatises and letters. Texts are approached with a mixture of suspicion and belief, inspired by Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics. Suspicion serves to disclose the misogyny of the epistemic regimes that produced the texts about and by women philosophers. Belief takes us beyond the circumstances of the texts’ production to possible worlds of diverse readers, institutions, and practices that grant agency to the female knower. In the process, the book uncovers traces of a fascinating dialogue about the gender of philosophical knowledge, which includes female voices.

scholarly journals ‘Your duplicitous point of view’: Delayed revelations of hypothetical focalisation in Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Sweet Tooth

2021 ◽  
pp. 096394702110097
Author(s):  
Naomi Adam
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Possible Worlds Theory ◽  
Ian Mcewan

Framed by cognitive-poetic and possible worlds theories, this article explores two 21st century novels by the British postmodernist author Ian McEwan. Building upon Ryan’s (1991) seminal conceptualisation of the theory in relation to literature and using the novels as case studies, possible worlds theory is used to explain the unique and destabilising stylistic effects at play in the texts, which result in a ‘duplicitous point of view’ and consequent disorientation for the reader. With reference to the stylistically deviant texts of McEwan, it is argued that revisions to current theoretical frameworks are warranted. Most significantly, the concepts of suppositious text-possible worlds and (total) frame readjustment are introduced. Further to this, neuropsychiatric research is applied to the novels, highlighting the potential for interdisciplinary overlap in the study of narrative focalisation. It is concluded that the duplicity integral to both novels’ themes and texture is effected through artful use of hypothetical focalisation and suppositious text-possible worlds.

scholarly journals Where are possible worlds? (arguments for ReALIS)

2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
GÁbor Alberti ◽  
Judit Kleiber
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds

Escape

Philosophy ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 15 (60) ◽  
pp. 386-399
Author(s):  
W. R. Inge
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Walt Whitman

There are times when we are so much in harmony with our surroundings that we are content to bask in the sunshine and to say to the passing hour, like Faust, “Stay with us; you are so fair.” There have been times when whole nations, or the most vocal part of them, have believed themselves to be living in a world which, if not the best of all possible worlds, is an abode from which they have no desire to escape. They are being challenged, for, as Walt Whitman says, “it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.” But the challenge is unheeded, and the price is demanded later.Ubi nil timetur, quod timeatur nascitur.

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