Actuality, Possibility, and Worlds

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?

Autorentext

Alexander R. Pruss is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, TX, USA. He has PhDs in both Philosophy as well as Mathematics and is the author of The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment (CUP, 2006) and co-editor, with Richard M. Gale, of The Existence of God (Ashgate, 2003).

Inhalt

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