Plenitude of Possible Structures

Journal of Philosophy 88 (11):607-619 (1991)
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Abstract

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 possibility plays in our inquiry into the world.

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Phillip Bricker
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Citations of this work

Monism.Jonathan Schaffer - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Absolute Actuality and the Plurality of Worlds.Phillip Bricker - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1):41–76.
Possible Patterns.Jeffrey Sanford Russell & John Hawthorne - 2018 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 11.
A tale of two simples.Joshua Spencer - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 148 (2):167 - 181.

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