Possible Worlds and the Objective World

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (2):389-422 (2015)
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Abstract

David Lewis holds that a single possible world can provide more than one way things could be. But what are possible worlds good for if they come apart from ways things could be? We can make sense of this if we go in for a metaphysical understanding of what the world is. The world does not include everything that is the case—only the genuine facts. Understood this way, Lewis's “cheap haecceitism” amounts to a kind of metaphysical anti-haecceitism: it says there aren't any genuine facts about individuals over and above their qualitative roles.

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Jeffrey Sanford Russell
University of Southern California

Citations of this work

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Counteridenticals.Alexander W. Kocurek - 2018 - The Philosophical Review 127 (3):323-369.
Qualitative Grounds.Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2016 - Philosophical Perspectives 30 (1):309-348.
Symmetries and the philosophy of language.Neil Dewar - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 52 (Part B):317-327.

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References found in this work

On the Plurality of Worlds.David K. Lewis - 1986 - Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Counterfactuals.David K. Lewis - 1973 - Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.

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