Interesting to read, here are a couple of comments on parts of what you say:
>the claim that all possibilities exist (ie. that counterfactuals are ontologically real)
‘counterfactuals are ontologically real’ seems like a bad way of re-expressing ‘all possibilities exist’. Counterfactuals themselves are sentences or propositions, and even people who think there’s e.g. no fact of the matter with many counterfactuals should agree that they themselves are real.
Secondly, most philosophers who would be comfortable with talking seriously about possibilities or possible worlds as real things would not go along with Lewis in holding them to be concrete. The view that possibilities really truly exist is quite mainstream and doesn’t commit you to modal realism.
>what worlds should we conceive of as being possible? Again, we can make this concrete by asking what would >happen if we were to choose a crazy set of possible worlds—say a world just like this one and then a world with >unicorns and fountains of gold—and no other worlds
I think it’s crucial to note that it’s not the presence of the unicorns world that makes trouble here, it’s the absence of all the other ones here. So what you’re gesturing at here is I think the need for a kind of plenitude in the possibilities one believes in.
I think it’s crucial to note that it’s not the presence of the unicorns world that makes trouble here, it’s the absence of all the other ones here. So what you’re gesturing at here is I think the need for a kind of plenitude in the possibilities one believes in.
I would express this as it not making sense to include some worlds without others.
Interesting to read, here are a couple of comments on parts of what you say:
>the claim that all possibilities exist (ie. that counterfactuals are ontologically real)
‘counterfactuals are ontologically real’ seems like a bad way of re-expressing ‘all possibilities exist’. Counterfactuals themselves are sentences or propositions, and even people who think there’s e.g. no fact of the matter with many counterfactuals should agree that they themselves are real.
Secondly, most philosophers who would be comfortable with talking seriously about possibilities or possible worlds as real things would not go along with Lewis in holding them to be concrete. The view that possibilities really truly exist is quite mainstream and doesn’t commit you to modal realism.
>what worlds should we conceive of as being possible? Again, we can make this concrete by asking what would >happen if we were to choose a crazy set of possible worlds—say a world just like this one and then a world with >unicorns and fountains of gold—and no other worlds
I think it’s crucial to note that it’s not the presence of the unicorns world that makes trouble here, it’s the absence of all the other ones here. So what you’re gesturing at here is I think the need for a kind of plenitude in the possibilities one believes in.
I would express this as it not making sense to include some worlds without others.