Jan Alber. Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama. Frontiers of Narrative Series. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2016, xi + 310 pp., $ 55.00.

2017 ◽  
Vol 135 (3) ◽  
pp. 595-599
Author(s):  
Georgia Christinidis
Keyword(s):  
Impossible Worlds ◽  
Unnatural Narrative

Reading Strategies and Impossible Worlds in Fiction: With Reference to Lincoln in the Bardo

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-327
Author(s):  
Roghayeh Farsi
Keyword(s):  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Reading Strategy ◽  
Impossible Worlds ◽  
Postmodern Fiction ◽  
Cognitive Operation ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
Unnatural Narrative ◽  
Experimental Novel

AbstractPostmodern fiction is marked by impossible worlds, the appreciation of which challenges readers and draws upon different cognitive operations. The present study reacts to the reading strategies proposed by Alber, J. 2016. Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama. Lincoln, NB and London: University of Nebraska Press. It adopts and adapts these strategies in a case study of Saunders’s experimental novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (2017). There is an attempt to investigate the cognitive operations that are activated in the process of communicating with and understanding such texts. The study evinces the pros and cons of Alber’s reading strategies. It proposes the cognitive operation of schematization in both online and offline forms as another reading strategy which helps readers understand impossibilities in texts.

Alternative Frameworks and Counterpossibles

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maciej Sendłak
Keyword(s):  
Impossible Worlds ◽  
Proper Theory

To solve the problem of counterpossibles (i.e., counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents), many philosophers have been arguing that one needs to invoke impossible worlds. This extension of the semantics of modality should save the analysis of counterfactuals from being insensitive to the problem of counterpossibles. The aim of this paper is to show why the theories of impossible worlds do not fully solve the problem of counterpossibles, but merely shift it. Moreover, by distinguishing two types of languages, we will show that some expectations about a proper theory of counterfactuals might be too great.

scholarly journals Rational Reasons, Counterfactual Statements and “Impossible Worlds” in the Philosophical Justifications of Thought Experiments

2022 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-43
Author(s):  
V. N. Karpovich
Keyword(s):  
David Lewis ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Impossible Worlds ◽  
Philosophical Discourse ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Classical Negation ◽  
The World

In his theory of natural laws David Lewis rejects the authenticity of impossible worlds on the grounds that the contradiction contained within his modifier "in (the world) w" is tantamount to a contradiction in the whole theory, which seems unacceptable. At the same time, in philosophical discourse very often researchers use counterfactual situations and thought experiments with impossible events and objects. There is a need to apply the theory of worlds to genuine, concrete, but impossible worlds. One way to do this is to reject Lewis's classical negation on the grounds that it leads to problems of completeness and inconsistency inside the worlds. The proposed extension for impossibility is compatible with Lewis's extensional metaphysics, although it leads to some loss for description completeness in semantics.

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