A plurality of worlds

Absolute Actuality and the Plurality of Worlds

Let’s fix some terminology at the start. A world (or possible world – for me, the ‘possible’ is redundant) is, first, an individual, not a set or class; second, a particular, not a property or universal; third, concrete in this sense: it is fully determinate in all qualitative respects; and, fourth, a maximal interrelated whole: each world is internally unified, and isolated from every other wo...

Complement anaphora and the plurality of worlds

In a nutshell We present novel data from German revealing an striking similarity in the behavior of complement anaphora (CA) in different domains (possible worlds, times, individuals): We argue that the distribution of CA in the domain of individuals requires the antecedent quantifier to provide a plurality. We show that the correlation of quantifier types and the availability of CA with condit...

David Lewis: on the Plurality of Worlds

entities, and abstract entities are actual by nature; or perhaps they are “analytic actualists,” holding that ersatz possibilia are actual because it is analytic that everything is actual. Either way, the ersatzist seems to have an advantage over the modal realist in agreeing with common sense that whatever exists is actual. More importantly, the ersatzist has an advantage over the modal realis...

Commentary David Lewis On the Plurality of Worlds Oxford : Blackwell

David Lewis is one of the most influential philosophers of our age, and On the Plurality of Worlds is his magnum opus. OPW offers an extended development and defense of the hypothesis that there are many universes, things of the same kind as the universe in which we all live, move, and have our being. Lewis calls these universes ―worlds‖, deliberately recalling the notion of a ―possible world‖ ...

Icy Satellite Processes in the Solar System: A plurality of worlds