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Questions tagged [david-lewis]

David Lewis (1941–2001) was an important 20th century analytic philosopher who worked in many areas of philosophy, especially in metaphysics.

David Lewis (1941–2001) was an important 20th century analytic philosopher who worked in many areas of philosophy, especially in metaphysics.

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For the modal realist, do possible individuals (and worlds) exist necessarily?

For David Lewis's Modal Realism, do the worlds and individuals that inhabit them exist necessarily? In a sense, the answer is "no". For an individual to exist necessarily would be for it to have a counterpart at every world, but Lewis is pretty…
Dennis
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Is the mathematical notion of a "standard model" a metaphysical or a (purely) epistemic distinction?

When doing mathematics and providing models that satisfy a given theory, we differentiate between standard and non-standard models. Now, assume you are a platonist and believe that the objects described by these models do really exist. Now would…
Dennis
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What's the difference between being spatiotemporally isolated and causally isolated?

In this Wikipedia article on modal realism, section "Main tenets of modal realism", there's a list of six tenets. Here are the fifth and the sixth of them: 5.Possible worlds are unified by the spatiotemporal interrelations of their parts; every…
user132181
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How does the concept of the 'virtual' (Deleuze) relate to 'counterfactuals' (Lewis)?

We read: "[...] Deleuze will reject the notion of the possible in favor of that of the virtual. Rather than awaiting realization, the virtual is fully real; what happens in genesis is that the virtual is actualized." Would it be considered…
user43583
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Epistemic access to possible worlds for David Lewis and empiricism

David Lewis believed that possible worlds are real and their existence are similar to actual world. Any world is causally and spatio-temporally disconnected from other worlds. David Lewis was an empiricist and I want to know how this view might be…
Arian
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In possible-world semantics, what do nested modal quantifiers mean?

I'm trying to learn modal logic and I'm having trouble translating sentences like [][]A and []<>A into natural language using possible-world semantics. The first statement seems to read, "In every possible world (in every possible world A)", and the…
Canyon
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Cardinality of the logical space according to David Lewis

I just read an extract of David Lewis's Counterfactuals and he claims there in a footnote on page 90 that there are at least beth_2 possible worlds. He also claims in the very same footnote that "[i]t can easily be shown that this is the number of…
pahohu
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Lewis's truth condition for counterfactuals

According to SEP, Lewis's theory of counterfactual conditionals defines truth for counterfactuals as follows: [...] the truth condition for the counterfactual “If A were (or had been) the case, C would be (or have been) the case” is stated as…
Rainer_Zoufal
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How disjunction works with the conditional excluded middle

I'm studying the semantics for counterfactuals, and I'm slightly confused about how certain inferences supposedly make the Conditional Excluded Middle (CXM) fail. Formally, we can write the principle as: (φ □→ ψ) v (φ □→ ~ψ) Enter the Bizet Verdi…
Daniel Prendergast
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The mereological account of sets

So it has come to my attention that David Lewis, David M. Armstrong and others tried a mereological account of sets. James Franklin states it as: Armstrong adopts David Lewis’s proposal that a set is the mereological sum of its singletons, and…
viuser
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A question about David Lewis's refutation of taking possibility as consistency

I’m reading a chapter from David Lewis’s counterfactuals. He says something which I’m confused about, wondering if any of you guys can explain what he's saying... “ We might take…. ‘Possibly P’ [to mean] that P is a consistent sentence… If a…
zzz
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Lewis's Counterfactual theory of conditionals

I'm starting to read Lewis' theory of counterfactuals. In his 1973 book, he specifies on page 10-11: "The left-hand counterfactuls make trounle for the theory that the counterfactual is a strict conditional [...] if Ψ is true at every accessible…
PwNzDust
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Best order to read David Lewis

I have read some papers by Lewis but never one of his full length books... I thought that I might do so. I am undecided whether to read Counterfactuals or On the plurality of worlds and wondered if anyone might have a view. OTPW is likely to be more…
Rollo Burgess
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Does denying the Limit Assumption in counterfactual logic lead to contradiction?

According to the similarity semantics for counterfactuals, a counterfactual A > C is true iff on the most similar class of worlds to the actual world (or any given world the counterfactual's truth value is judged on) where A is true, C is also true.…
Daniel Prendergast
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David Lewis and probability

I have read a general overview on David Lewis in order to have an idea of his philosophical perspective and in particular about humean supervenience. I am wondering how Lewis considers probability in nature (not in logic)? Does he adhere to…
RaquelV.S.
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