scholarly journals Impossibility and impossible worlds

2020 ◽  
pp. 40-48
Author(s):  
Daniel Nolan
Keyword(s):  
Impossible Worlds

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.

Epistemic and Doxastic Contents

2019 ◽  
pp. 213-238
Author(s):  
Francesco Berto ◽  
Mark Jago
Keyword(s):  
Bounded Rationality ◽  
Logical Consequence ◽  
External World ◽  
Belief State ◽  
Impossible Worlds ◽  
Formal Models ◽  
Closure Principle ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Belief States ◽  
Trivial Consequence

The case for making belief states the primary focus of our analysis and for including impossible worlds in that analysis is outlined in this chapter. This allows the reader to deny various closure principles, although this won’t help defeat worries about external-world scepticism. The issue that concerns the authors most is the problem of bounded rationality: belief states seem to be closed under ‘easy’ trivial consequence, but not under full logical consequence, and yet the former implies the latter. The solution presented here is that some trivial closure principle must fail on a given belief state, yet it is indeterminate just where this occurs. Formal models of belief states along these lines are given and it is shown that they respect the indeterminacy-of-closure intuition. Finally, the chapter discusses how we might square this approach with the fact that some people seem to believe contradictions.

Constructing the Impossible

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-163
Author(s):  
Kit Fine
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Formal Languages ◽  
Impossible Worlds ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Limited Role ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Degree Of Acceptance ◽  
Broad Role ◽  
Natural Way

Please keep the original abstract. A number of philosophers have flirted with the idea of impossible worlds and some have even become enamored of it. But it has not met with the same degree of acceptance as the more familiar idea of a possible world. Whereas possible worlds have played a broad role in specifying the semantics for natural language and for a wide range of formal languages, impossible worlds have had a much more limited role; and there has not even been general agreement as to how a reasonable theory of impossible worlds is to be developed or applied. This chapter provides a natural way of introducing impossible states into the framework of truthmaker semantics and shows how their introduction permits a number of useful applications.

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