Actuality, Possibility, and Worlds

ISBN-13: 9781441145161 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 320 str.

Alexander R Pruss

Opis

Actuality, Possibility and Worlds is an exploration of the Aristotelian account that sees possibilities as grounded in causal powers. On his way to that account, Pruss surveys a number of historical approaches and argues that logicist approaches to possibility are implausible.

The notion of possible worlds appears to be useful for many purposes, such as the analysis of counterfactuals or elucidating the nature of propositions and properties. This usefulness of possible worlds makes for a second general question: Are there any possible worlds and, if so, what are they? Are they concrete universes as David Lewis thinks, Platonic abstracta as per Robert M. Adams and Alvin Plantinga, or maybe linguistic or mathematical constructs such as Heller thinks? Or is perhaps Leibniz right in thinking that possibilia are not on par with actualities and that abstracta can only exist in a mind, so that possible worlds are ideas in the mind of God?

Spis treści

Preface

Part I. Introduction
Section 1 Generic definitions and basic modal realism
Section 2 Metaphysical versus logical possibility?
Section 3 S5
Section 4 Eight views of possibility

Part II. Applications and pseudo-applications
Section 1 Modality
Section 2 Counterfactuals and causality
Section 3 Propositions
Section 4 Properties
Section 5 Overall assessment

Part III. The Lewisian ontology of extreme modal realism
Section 1 The Lewisian account of possible worlds
Section 2 Identity vs. counterpart theory
Section 3 Indiscernible worlds?
Section 4 Lewis's arguments for his ontology
Section 5 Objections to Lewis's account of actuality
Section 6 The possibility of spatio-temporally unrelated co-actual entities
Section 7 Cardinality and the "set" of all possible worlds
Section 8 Ethical issues
Section 9 Induction and actuality
Section 10 The epistemological objection
Section 11 Explaining the actual in terms of the necessary
Section 12 A final assessment of extreme modal realism

Part IV. Platonic ersatz ontologies
Section 1 The general strategy
Section 2 Linguistic approaches
Section 3 Platonism
Section 4 Conclusions

Part V. Sketches towards a Spinozistic-Tractarian account of modality
Section 1 Asserting, naming and infallibility
Section 2 Spinoza
Section 3 A radical theory of modality
Section 4 Costs
Section 5 The less radical theory

Part VI. Aristotelian-Leibnizian ontology
Section 1 Leibniz's approach
Section 2 Aristotelian possibility and causality
Section 3 Combining with the Spinozistic-Tractarian view
Section 4 Ordinary alethic modal talk
Section 5 The Principle of Sufficient Reason
Section 6 Ontology and implications
Section 7 The main challenges to Lewisian and Platonic ontologies can be resolved
Section 9 Objections to the A-L view

Part VII. Final conclusions
Section 1 Cost-benefit arguments for the Aristotelian-Leibnizian ontology of possible worlds
Section 2 Choosing between accounts of possibility

Bibliography