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196Isolation and Unification: The Realist Analysis of Possible WorldsPhilosophical Studies 84 (2-3). 1996.If realism about possible worlds is to succeed in eliminating primitive modality, it must provide an 'analysis' of possible world: nonmodal criteria for demarcating one world from another. This David Lewis has done. Lewis holds, roughly, that worlds are maximal unified regions of logical space. So far, so good. But what Lewis means by 'unification' is too narrow, I think, in two different ways. First, for Lewis, all worlds are (almost) 'globally' unified: at any world, (almost) every part is dir…Read more
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130The Methodology of Modal Logic as MetaphysicsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (3): 717-725. 2014.
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198Plenitude of Possible StructuresJournal of Philosophy 88 (11): 607-619. 1991.Which mathematical structures are possible, that is, instantiated by the concrete inhabitants of some possible world? Are there worlds with four-dimensional space? With infinite-dimensional space? Whence comes our knowledge of the possibility of structures? In this paper, I develop and defend a principle of plenitude according to which any mathematically natural generalization of possible structure is itself possible. I motivate the principle pragmatically by way of the role that logical possibi…Read more
Amherst, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mathematics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |