About this topic
Summary Modal realism is the view that there are many possible worlds and and that they are concrete entities of the same kind as the world we live in.
Key works The most prominent version of modal realism is that of Lewis 1986. Other important varieties of modal realism include those of Bricker 2008 and McDaniel 2004.
Introductions For a good introduction to modal realism, see Sider 2003 and chapter 5 of Melia 2003.
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358 found
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  1. How to Be a Modal Realist.Cian Dorr - manuscript
    This paper investigates the form a modal realist analysis of possibility and necessity should take. It concludes that according to the best version of modal realism, the notion of a world plays no role in the analysis of modal claims. All contingent claims contain some de re element; the effect of modal operators on these elements is described by a counterpart theory which takes the same form whether the de re reference is to a world or to something else. This (...)
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  2. Consciousness, psychophysical harmony, and anthropic reasoning.Mario Gomez-Torrente - manuscript
    The thesis, typical among dualists, that there are no necessitation relations between events of consciousness and physical events implies that it is prima facie lucky that in our world the apparently existing psychophysical laws usually match events of consciousness and physical events in a “harmonious” way. The lucky psychophysical laws argument concludes that typical dualism amounts to a psychophysical parallelism that is prima facie too improbable to be true. I argue that an anthropic reasoning in the space of possible worlds (...)
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  3. Modal Realism and the Meaning of 'Exist'.T. Parent - manuscript
    Here I first raise an argument purporting to show that Lewis’ Modal Realism ends up being entirely trivial. But although I reject this line, the argument reveals how difficult it is to interpret Lewis’ thesis that possibilia “exist.” Five natural interpretations are considered, yet upon reflection, none appear entirely adequate. On the three different “concretist” interpretations of ‘exist’, Modal Realism looks insufficient for genuine ontological commitment. Whereas, on the “multiverse” interpretation, Modal Realism acknowledges physical possibilities only--and worse, (assuming either axiom (...)
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  4. From Possible Worlds to Parallel Universes.Nathan Salmon - manuscript
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  5. Modal Realism and Coincident Objects. [REVIEW]F. Sohani - manuscript
    Imagine two objects, a lump of clay called Lumpl and a statue named Goliath, which are created and destroyed simultaneously, sharing all spatiotemporal properties. Despite their complete coincidence throughout existence, they appear to possess different properties, leading to a philosophical debate among metaphysicians. Monists argue for their identity, while pluralists deny it. Pluralists face the challenge of explaining the differences between these coincident objects, while monists must account for the modal differences if they are identical. Monists often turn to Lewisean (...)
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  6. A Puzzle for Modal Realism (Talk).Daniel Graham Marshall - 2016
    Modal realists face a puzzle. For modal realism to be justified, modal realists need to be able to give a successful reduction of modality. A simple argument, however, appears to show that the reduction they propose fails. In order to defend the claim that modal realism is justified, modal realists therefore need to either show that this argument fails, or show that modal realists can give another reduction of modality that is successful. I argue that modal realists cannot do either (...)
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  7. Center Indifference and Skepticism.David Builes - forthcoming - Noûs.
    Many philosophers have been attracted to a restricted version of the principle of indifference in the case of self-locating belief. Roughly speaking, this principle states that, within any given possible world, one should be indifferent between different hypotheses concerning who one is within that possible world, so long as those hypotheses are compatible with one’s evidence. My first goal is to defend a more precise version of this principle. After responding to several existing criticisms of such a principle, I argue (...)
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  8. Hybrid Modal Realism Debugged.Camille Fouché - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-25.
    In this paper, I support a hybrid view regarding the metaphysics of worlds. I endorse Lewisian Modal Realism for possible worlds. My aim is to come up with a hybrid account of impossible worlds that provides all the plenitude of impossibilities for all fine-grained intentional contents. I raise several challenges for such a plenitudinous hybrid theory. My version of hybrid modal realism builds impossible worlds as set-theoretic constructions out of genuine individuals and sets of them, that is, as set-theoretic constructions (...)
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  9. Modal Realism and Anthropic Reasoning.Mario Gomez-Torrente - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    Some arguments against David Lewis’s modal realism seek to exploit apparent inconsistencies between it and anthropic reasoning. A recent argument, in particular, seeks to exploit an inconsistency between modal realism and typicality anthropic premises, premises common in the literature on physical multiverses, to the effect that observers who are like human observers in certain respects must be typical in the relevant multiverse. Here I argue that typicality premises are not applicable to the description of Lewis’s metaphysical multiverse, where the proportions (...)
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  10. Time and Modality.Samuele Iaquinto - forthcoming - In Nina Emery (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Time. Routledge.
    Time and modality show remarkable similarities. Each of the most discussed theories in philosophy of time finds an analogous counterpart in modal metaphysics, suggesting that the parallel between the two notions is metaphysically deep. This chapter offers a brief overview of their analogies. Section 1 addresses the analogy between presentism and actualism. Section 2 explores the analogy between non-presentist theories and possibilism. Section 3 discusses the analogy between temporal and modal persistence.
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  11. Fragmenting Modal Logic.Samuele Iaquinto, Ciro De Florio & Aldo Frigerio - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Fragmentalism allows incompatible facts to constitute reality in an absolute manner, provided that they fail to obtain together. In recent years, the view has been extensively discussed, with a focus on its formalisation in model-theoretic terms. This paper focuses on three formalisations: Lipman’s approach, the subvaluationist interpretation, and a novel view that has been so far overlooked. The aim of the paper is to explore the application of these formalisations to the alethic modal case. This logical exploration will allow us (...)
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  12. On the Plurality of Parts of Classes.Daniel Nolan - forthcoming - Dialectica.
    The ontological pictures underpinning David Lewis's Parts of Classes and On the Plurality of Worlds are in some tension. One tension concerns whether the sets and classes of Parts of Classes can be found in Lewis's modal space, since they cannot in general be parts of any possible world. The second is that the atoms that are the mathematical ontology of Parts of Classes seem to meet the criteria for being possible worlds themselves, and so fail to be the material (...)
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  13. Lewisian Worlds and Buridanian Possibilia.Boaz Faraday Schuman - forthcoming - Dialectica.
    Many things can be other than they are. Many other things cannot. But what are statements like these about? One answer to this question is that we are speaking of possible worlds: if something can be other than it is, then it actually is that way in some possible world. If something cannot be otherwise, it is not otherwise in any world. This answer is presently dominant in analytical philosophy of language and logic. What are these worlds? David Lewis famously (...)
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  14. Worlds are Pluralities.Isaac Wilhelm - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    I propose an account of possible worlds. According to the account, possible worlds are pluralities of sentences in an extremely large language. This account avoids a problem, relating to the total number of possible worlds, that other accounts face. And it has several additional benefits.
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  15. Plenitude and Recombination.Alastair Wilson - forthcoming - In Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis. Oxford University Press.
    In On the Plurality of Worlds (Lewis 1986), David Lewis imposes a condition on realist theories of modality which he calls ‘plenitude’. Lewis apparently assigns this condition considerable importance, and uses it to motivate his Humean principle of recombination, but he never says exactly what plenitude amounts to. This chapter first sets aside some obvious ways of reconstructing the plenitude criterion which do not fit with the textual evidence. An objection to modal realism due to John Divers and Joseph Melia (...)
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  16. Making New Tools From the Toolbox of Metaphysics. [REVIEW]Raoni Wohnrath Arroyo - 2023 - Erkenntnis (5):2251-2257.
    In this review, I specify the metametaphysical background against which Alastair Wilson’s “_The Nature of Contingency_” (Oxford University Press, 2020) should be properly understood. Metaphysics, as a philosophical discipline, is standing on thin ice. The caricature of the situation is polarized, and is often presented as follows: metaphysics is either entirely extracted from science or it is entirely independent of science. There is a recent trend that focuses on the middle ground between these extremes, searching the philosophical literature for metaphysical (...)
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  17. A Comparative Analysis of David Lewis' Modal Realism and Everett's Many Worlds on Closed Time-like Curves and Time Travel.Fabian Kerj - 2023 - Dissertation, King's College London
    This paper explores the physical and metaphysical implications of time travel, focusing on the possibility of changing the past, through a comparative analysis of David Lewis' modal realism and Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The existence of closed timelike curves (CTCs) in certain solutions to Einstein's field equations provides a theoretical basis for the possibility of backwards time travel, but this leads to a range of paradoxes, most notably the grandfather paradox. David Lewis argues that time travel must maintain (...)
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  18. The many‐worlds theory of consciousness.Christian List - 2023 - Noûs 57 (2):316-340.
    This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first-personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ (...)
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  19. Whence deep realism for Everettian quantum mechanics?Raoni Wohnrath Arroyo & Jonas R. Becker Arenhart - 2022 - Foundations of Physics 52 (6):121.
    ‘Shallow’ and ‘deep’ versions of scientific realism may be distinguished as follows: the shallow realist is satisfied with belief in the existence of the posits of our best scientific theories; by contrast, deep realists claim that realism can be legitimate only if such entities are described in metaphysical terms. We argue that this methodological discussion can be fruitfully applied in Everettian quantum mechanics, specifically on the debate concerning the existence of worlds and the recent dispute between Everettian actualism and quantum (...)
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  20. Modal Realism is a Newcomb Problem.Scott Hill - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87 (6):2993-3005.
    Some philosophers worry that if modal realism is true, you have no reason to prevent evils. For if you prevent an evil, you’ll have a counterpart somewhere that allows a similar evil. And if you refrain, your counterpart will end up preventing the relevant evil. Either way one evil is prevented and one is allowed. Your act makes no difference. I argue that this is mistaken. If modal realism is true, you are in a variant of Newcomb’s Problem. And if (...)
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  21. The Metaphysics of Ockhamism.Andrea Iacona - 2022 - In Alessio Santelli (ed.), Ockhamism and Philosophy of Time: Semantic and Metaphysical Issues concerning Future Contingents. Springer.
    This paper investigates Ockhamism from a metaphysical point of view. Its main point is that the claim that future contingents are true or false is less demanding than usually expected, as it does not require particularly contentious assumptions about the future. First it will be argued that Ockhamism is consistent with a wide range of metaphysical views. Then it will be shown that each of these views leaves room for the claim that the future is open, at least on some (...)
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  22. Fragmenting Reality: An Essay on Passage, Causality and Time Travel.Samuele Iaquinto & Giuliano Torrengo - 2022 - London: Bloomsbury.
    The growing interest in fragmentalism is one of the most exciting trends in philosophy of time and is gradually reshaping the contemporary debate. Providing an extensive interpretation of this view, Samuele Iaquinto and Giuliano Torrengo articulate a novel theory of the passage of time and argue that it is the most effective in vindicating the inherent dynamism of reality. Iaquinto and Torrengo offer the first full-range application of fragmentalism to a number of metaphysical topics, including the open future, causation, the (...)
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  23. Materiality, Parthood, and Possibility.Samuele Iaquinto & Giuliano Torrengo - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87:1125-1131.
    This paper offers an argument in favour of a Lewisian version of concretism that maintains both the principle of material inheritance (according to which, if all the parts of an object x are material, then x is material) and the materiality-modality link (that is, the principle that, for every x, if x is material, then x is possible).
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  24. Metaphysical Modality, without Possible Worlds.Giorgio Lando - 2022 - In Francesco Ademollo, Fabrizio Amerini & Vincenzo De Risi (eds.), Thinking and Calculating. Cham: Springer. pp. 385-408.
    Aim of this paper is to analyse and assess two divergent understandings of metaphysical modality. On one hand, according to the absolutist conception, metaphysical modality is the extreme variety of objective modality and can be characterised in terms of all the varieties of objective modality: for example, p is metaphysically necessary if and only if p is necessary for every variety of objective necessity. The absolutist conception can also be framed in terms of counterfactual inevitability. On the other hand, according (...)
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  25. On the Charge of Irrelevance against D. Lewis’s Modal Realism.Monika Morkūnaitė - 2022 - Problemos 101:52-65.
    The article deals with the charge of irrelevance levelled against D. Lewis’s modal realism, notably known as a reductionist account of modality. The charge of irrelevance is apparently one of the most popular objections to modal realism though it often seems that the debate surrounding this charge is not very fruitful since in this context it is common to appeal, implicitly or explicitly, to different criteria for theory choice. As a result, the article deals with the problem in a slightly (...)
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  26. Necessitism, Contingentism, and Lewisian Modal Realism.Cristina Nencha - 2022 - Acta Analytica 37 (2):227-247.
    Necessitism is the controversial thesis that necessarily everything is necessarily something, namely that everything, everywhere, necessarily exists. What is controversial about necessitism is that, at its core, it claims that things could not have failed to exist, while we have a pre-theoretical intuition that not everything necessarily exists. Contingentism, in accordance with common sense, denies necessitism: it claims that some things could have failed to exist. Timothy Williamson is a necessitist and claims that David Lewis is a necessitist too. The (...)
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  27. Some deities are better than others.Eric Steinhart - 2022 - In Kirk Lougheed (ed.), Value beyond Monotheism: The Axiology of the Divine. New York: Routledge. pp. 46-63.
    A deity is a superhuman person. Since deities are persons, they are axiologically comparable with each other. They are comparable in terms of their moral, political, and other axiological qualities. I regard all deities as contingent concrete worldbound particulars. To compare deities is to compare possible objects across worlds. I aim to compare the axiological qualities of deities taken from the entire Western ecosystem of deities. I will compare deities in terms of their moral and political qualities (this deity is (...)
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  28. Atheistic Platonism: A Manifesto.Eric Charles Steinhart - 2022 - Springer Verlag.
    Atheistic Platonism is an alternative to both theism and nihilistic atheism. It shows how any jobs allegedly done by God are better done by impersonal Platonic objects. Without Platonic objects, atheism degenerates into an illogical nihilism. Atheistic Platonism instead provides reality with foundations that are eternal, necessary, rational, beautiful, and utterly mindless. It argues for a plenitude of mathematical objects, and an infinite plurality of possible universes. It provides mindless rational grounds for objective values, and for objective moral laws for (...)
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  29. Necessity First.Alastair Wilson - 2022 - Argumenta 14.
    My topic in this paper is the relationships of metaphysical priority which might hold between the different alethic modal statuses—necessity, contingency, possibility and impossibility. In particular, I am interested in exploring the view that the necessity of necessities is ungrounded while the contingency of contingencies is grounded—a scenario I call ‘necessity first’. I will explicate and scrutinize the contrast between necessity first and its ‘contingency first’ contrary, and then compare both views with ‘multimodal’ and ‘amodal’ alternatives, drawing on David Lewis’s (...)
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  30. Making New Tools From the Toolbox of Metaphysics: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, 240 p, ISBN: 9780198846215. [REVIEW]Raoni Wohnrath Arroyo - 2021 - Erkenntnis 88 (5):2251-2257.
    In this review, I specify the metametaphysical background against which Alastair Wilson’s “The Nature of Contingency” (Oxford University Press, 2020) should be properly understood. Metaphysics, as a philosophical discipline, is standing on thin ice. The caricature of the situation is polarized, and is often presented as follows: metaphysics is either entirely extracted from science or it is entirely independent of science. There is a recent trend that focuses on the middle ground between these extremes, searching the philosophical literature for metaphysical (...)
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  31. God’s Place in Logical Space.Andrew Dennis Bassford - 2021 - Journal of Analytic Theology 9:100-125.
    It has been argued recently that classical theism and Lewisian modal realism are incompatible theses. The most substantial argument to this effect takes the form of a trilemma. It argues that no sense can be made of God’s being a necessary being in the modal realistic picture, on pain of, among other things, modal collapse. The question of this essay is: Is that so? My goal here is to detail the reasons that have been offered in support of this contention (...)
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  32. Modal Realism and the Possibility of Island Universes: Why There are no Possible Worlds.Jiri Benovsky - 2021 - Metaphysica 22 (1):1-13.
    In this article, I defend Lewisian modal realism against objections arising from the possibility of ‘Island Universes’ and other similar cases. The problem comes from Lewis’ claim that possible worlds are spatio-temporally isolated. I suggest a modification of Lewisian modal realism in order to avoid this family of objections. This modification may sound quite radical since it amounts to abandoning the very notion of a possible world, but as radical as it may sound it in fact remains well in the (...)
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  33. Brandom and A Spirit of Trust.Willem A. deVries - 2021 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 29 (2):236-250.
    For years, Robert B. Brandom has been working on a book on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Earlier versions of its chapters were available for scrutiny at Brandom’s website. But the book itself is...
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  34. Theistic modal realism and causal modal collapse.Nuno Maia - 2021 - Religious Studies 57 (1):120-135.
    Theistic modal realism argues for an extension of Lewis's modal realism capable of accommodating a theistic God. By affording elegant solutions to many atheistic challenges, the view is of great theoretical utility for the theist. However, it has been objected that within a Lewisian framework God cannot be causally efficacious on pain of collapsing intuitively distinct modal notions. In this article I explain why these worries are ill-founded and show how God's existence and causal power over the pluriverse can be (...)
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  35. The Landscape and the Multiverse: What’s the Problem?James Read & Baptiste Le Bihan - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):7749-7771.
    As a candidate theory of quantum gravity, the popularity of string theory has waxed and waned over the past four decades. One current source of scepticism is that the theory can be used to derive, depending upon the input geometrical assumptions that one makes, a vast range of different quantum field theories, giving rise to the so-called landscape problem. One apparent way to address the landscape problem is to posit the existence of a multiverse; this, however, has in turn drawn (...)
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  36. The Metaphysics of Theism: A Classical and Neo-Classical Synthesis.Joshua R. Sijuwade - 2021 - Religions 12 (11):1-29.
    This article aims to provide a metaphysical elucidation of the notion of Theism and a coherent theological synthesis of two extensions of this notion: Classical Theism and Neo-Classical Theism. A model of this notion and its extensions is formulated within the ontological pluralism framework of Kris McDaniel and Jason Turner, and the (modified) modal realism framework of David Lewis, which enables it to be explicated clearly and consistently, and two often raised objections against the elements of this notion can be (...)
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  37. Extended Modal Realism: A New Solution to Problems Related to Non-existence.Andrew Thomas - 2021 - Dissertation, Durham University
    This thesis argues that we should consider extended modal realism as a new player in the debate about non-existence. The primary aim is to show that extended modal realism is a viable theory when it comes to solving problems of non-existence. At times I will argue that extended modal realism has advantages over Lewisian modal realism when it comes to examining the problems of non-existence, not only in the case of problems relating to thought but also problems concerning truth as (...)
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  38. Extended Modal Realism — A New Solution to Problems Related to Non-existence.Andrew Thomas - 2021 - Dissertation, Durham University
  39. Is Metaphysics Immune to Moral Refutation?Alex Barber - 2020 - Acta Analytica 35 (4):469-492.
    When a novel scientific theory conflicts with otherwise plausible moral assumptions, we do not treat that as evidence against the theory. We may scrutinize the empirical data more keenly and take extra care over its interpretation, but science is in some core sense immune to moral refutation. Can the same be said of philosophical theories (or the non-ethical, ‘metaphysical’ ones at least)? If a position in the philosophy of mind, for example, is discovered to have eye-widening moral import, does that (...)
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  40. All Worlds in One: Reassessing the Forest-Armstrong Argument.Phillip Bricker - 2020 - In Modal Matters: Essays in Metaphysics. Oxford: OUP. pp. 278-314.
    The Forrest-Armstrong argument, as reconfigured by David Lewis, is a reductio against an unrestricted principle of recombination. There is a gap in the argument which Lewis thought could be bridged by an appeal to recombination. After presenting the argument, I show that no plausible principle of recombination can bridge the gap. But other plausible principles of plenitude can bridge the gap, both principles of plenitude for world contents and principles of plenitude for world structures. I conclude that the Forrest-Armstrong argument, (...)
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  41. Realism without parochialism.Phillip Bricker - 2020 - In Modal Matters: Essays in Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 40-76.
    I am a realist of a metaphysical stripe. I believe in an immense realm of "modal" and "abstract" entities, of entities that are neither part of, nor stand in any causal relation to, the actual, concrete world. For starters: I believe in possible worlds and individuals; in propositions, properties, and relations (both abundantly and sparsely conceived); in mathematical objects and structures; and in sets (or classes) of whatever I believe in. Call these sorts of entity, and the reality they comprise, (...)
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  42. Modal Matters: Essays in Metaphysics.Phillip Bricker (ed.) - 2020 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
    This volume contains eighteen papers, three with new postscripts, that were written over the past 35 years. Five of the papers have not been previously published. Together they provide a comprehensive account of modal reality—the realm of possible worlds—from a Humean perspective, with excursions into neighboring topics in metaphysics. Part 1 sketches an account of reality as a whole, both the mathematical and the modal, defending a form of plenitudinous realism: every consistent proposition is true of some portion of reality. (...)
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  43. Correction to: On Lewis against magic: a study of method in metaphysics.A. R. J. Fisher - 2020 - Synthese 197 (11):4743-4743.
    Please note that this article belongs to the Special Issue on the Legacy of David Lewis but was included in issue 195:5 by mistake. It should be regarded as part of this selection of articles.
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  44. Modal Fragmentalism.Samuele Iaquinto - 2020 - The Philosophical Quarterly 70:570-587.
    In this paper, I will argue that there is a version of possibilism—inspired by the modal analogue of Kit Fine’s fragmentalism—that can be combined with a weakening of actualism. The reasons for analysing this view, which I call Modal Fragmentalism, are twofold. Firstly, it can enrich our understanding of the actualism/possibilism divide, by showing that, at least in principle, the adoption of possibilia does not correspond to an outright rejection of the actualist intuitions. Secondly, and more specifically, it can enrich (...)
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  45. The limits of classical mereology: Mixed fusions and the failures of mereological hybridism.Joshua Kelleher - 2020 - Dissertation, The University of Queensland
    In this thesis I argue against unrestricted mereological hybridism, the view that there are absolutely no constraints on wholes having parts from many different logical or ontological categories, an exemplar of which I take to be ‘mixed fusions’. These are composite entities which have parts from at least two different categories – the membered (as in classes) and the non-membered (as in individuals). As a result, mixed fusions can also be understood to represent a variety of cross-category summation such as (...)
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  46. Two Geometrical Models for Pixelism.Fabio Patrone - 2020 - Metaphysica (1):99-113.
    Pixelism is the combination of three metaphysical thesis, namely a radical form of exdurantism, mereological nihilism and counterpart theory. Pixelism is a theory that evaluates all the metaphysical phenomena of persistence, composition and modality in a homogeneous and consistent manner. In a pixel world, there is no identity over time and over possible worlds and nothing persists over more than an instant or a world. Entities can be univocally identified by a five-coordinates system (the three spatial dimensions, the temporal one (...)
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  47. On the Probability of Plenitude.Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2020 - Journal of Philosophy 117 (5):267-292.
    I examine what the mathematical theory of random structures can teach us about the probability of Plenitude, a thesis closely related to David Lewis's modal realism. Given some natural assumptions, Plenitude is reasonably probable a priori, but in principle it can be (and plausibly it has been) empirically disconfirmed—not by any general qualitative evidence, but rather by our de re evidence.
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  48. Extended Modal Realism — a New Solution to the Problem of Intentional Inexistence.Andrew D. Thomas - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (3):1197-1208.
    Kriegel described the problem of intentional inexistence as one of the ‘perennial problems of philosophy’, 307–340, 2007: 307). In the same paper, Kriegel alluded to a modal realist solution to the problem of intentional inexistence. However, Kriegel does not state by name who defends the kind of modal realist solution he has in mind. Kriegel also points out that even what he believes to be the strongest version of modal realism does not pass the ‘principle of representation’ and thus modal (...)
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  49. (Extended) Modal Realism and Philosophical Analysis.Martin Vacek - 2020 - Bratislava: VEDA.
    Theories of possible worlds abound. Since the introduction of modal logic, the term of a possible world, and the very nature of an entity denoted by the term, have stood on the top of metaphysical inquiries. A possible world, roughly speaking, is a complete way things could have been. On the face of it, whatever is possible takes place in some possible world, and whatever is not possible, does not. The aim of the present book is to argue that even (...)
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  50. The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism.Alastair Wilson - 2020 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing possibility, necessity, (...)
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