Impossible Worlds: A Modest Approach
Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 38 (4):535-572 (1997)
Abstract
Reasoning about situations we take to be impossible is useful for a variety of theoretical purposes. Furthermore, using a device of impossible worlds when reasoning about the impossible is useful in the same sorts of ways that the device of possible worlds is useful when reasoning about the possible. This paper discusses some of the uses of impossible worlds and argues that commitment to them can and should be had without great metaphysical or logical cost. The paper then provides an account of reasoning with impossible worlds, by treating such reasoning as reasoning employing counterpossible conditionals, and provides a semantics for the proposed treatmentAuthor's Profile
DOI
10.1305/ndjfl/1039540769
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Citations of this work
On what grounds what.Jonathan Schaffer - 2009 - In David Manley, David J. Chalmers & Ryan Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford University Press. pp. 347-383.
Grounding in the image of causation.Jonathan Schaffer - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (1):49-100.
Modality and Explanatory Reasoning.Boris Christian Kment - 2014 - New York: Oxford University Press.
References found in this work
Two Concepts of Possible Worlds.Peter van Inwagen - 1986 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11 (1):185-213.