This book is a defense of modal realism; the thesis that our world is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that the individuals that inhabit our world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds. Lewis argues that the philosophical utility of modal realism is a good reason for believing that it is true.

In his note "can there be vague objects?" ("analysis", 1978), Gareth evans presents a purported proof that there can be no vague identity statements. Some readers think that evans endorses the proof and its false conclusion. Not so. His point is that those who put vagueness in the world, Rather than in language, Will have no way to fault the proof and no way to escape the false conclusion.

Counterfactuals is David Lewis' forceful presentation of and sustained argument for a particular view about propositions which express contrary to fact conditionals, including his famous defense of realism about possible worlds and his theory of laws of nature.

Epistemic Evaluation aims to explore and apply a particular methodology in epistemology. The methodology is to consider the point or purpose of our epistemic evaluations, and to pursue epistemological theory in light of such matters. Call this purposeful epistemology. The idea is that considerations about the point and purpose of epistemic evaluation might fruitfully constrain epistemological theory and yield insights for epistemological reflection. Several contributions to this volume explicitly address this general methodology, or some version of it. Others focus on (...) advancing some application of the methodology rather than on theorizing about it. The papers go on to explore the idea that purposes allow one to understand the conceptual demands on knowing, examine how purposeful epistemology might shed light on the debate between internalist and externalist epistemologies, and further develop the idea of purposeful epistemology. (shrink)

The paradoxes of time travel are oddities, not impossibilities. This chapter concerns with the sort of time travel that is recounted in science fiction. It argues that what goes on in a time travel story may be a possible pattern of events in four‐dimensional space‐time with no extra time dimension; that it may be correct to regard the scattered stages of the alleged time traveler as comprising a single person; and that we may legitimately assign to those stages and their (...) surroundings a personal time order that disagrees sometimes with their order in external time. Some might concede all this, but protest that the impossibility of time travel is revealed after all when we ask not what the time traveler does, but what he could do. Finally the chapter provides time travel story about Tim and Tom. (shrink)

This outline for a paper, which develops a compatibilist analysis of abilities, was completed by David Lewis during his sabbatical in the Fall semester of 2000 and is dated 20 January 2001. Starting from the claim that it’s a “Moorean fact” that we are often able to do otherwise, Lewis provides a “simple proof of compatibilism.” He then presents his own account of abilities: S is able to A if and only if there are no obstacles to their A-ing, (...) where an obstacle is a “robust preventer”: something that would cause S not to A, and which “wouldn’t go away if things were just a little different.”. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 128-141, January 2021.

It is advisable to treat some sorts of discourse about fiction with the aid of an intensional operator "in such-And-Such fiction...." the operator may appear either explicitly or tacitly. It may be analyzed in terms of similarity of worlds, As follows: "in the fiction f, A" means that a is true in those of the worlds where f is told as known fact rather than fiction that differ least from our world, Or from the belief worlds of the community in (...) which the fiction originated. (shrink)

Second part of the translation into Spanish of David Lewis' "New Work for a Theory of Universals", corresponding to the last sections of the original paper. || Segunda parte de la traducción al español del trabajo de David Lewis "New Work for a Theory of Universals", correspondiente a últimas secciones del artículo original. Artículo original publicado en: Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 61, No. 4, Dec. 1983, pp. 343-377.

What knowledge would suffice to yield an interpretation of an arbitrary utterance of a language when such knowledge is based on evidence plausibly available to a nonspeaker of that language? it is argued that it is enough to know a theory of truth for the language and that the theory satisfies tarski's 'convention t' and that it gives an optimal fit to data about sentences held true, Under specified conditions, By native speakers.

This article investigates and provides guidelines to the negative impact of mahadi on the Basotho youth before they may marry. It is important to note that marriage is one of the main parts of the life cycle amongst the Basotho and not only joins a man and a woman together, but is also considered to unite the members of the respective families of the married couple into one family. This union of two families comes into effect when the process of (...) negotiation of the mahadi is initiated. The negotiation for mahadi is, in other words, the first stage of bonding two families together. In the hope of gaining a better understanding and results, the writer searched for a qualitative method to conduct the research. (shrink)

The void is deadly. If you were cast into a void, it would cause you to die in just a few minutes. It would suck the air from your lungs. It would boil your blood. It would drain the warmth from your body. And it would inflate enclosures in your body until they burst}.

A solution to the problem of intrinsic change for enduring things should meet three conditions. It should not replace monadic intrinsic properties by relations. It should not replace the having simpliciter of properties by standing in some relation to them. It should not rely on an unexplained notion of having an intrinsic property at a time. Johnston's solution satisfies the first condition at the expense of the second. Haslanger's solution satisfies the first and second at the expense of the third.

By a macro-level feature, I understand any feature that supervenes on, and is thus realized in, lower-level features. Recent discussions by Kim have suggested that such features cannot be causally relevant insofar as they are not classically reducible to lower-level features. This seems to render macro-level features causally irrelevant. I defend the causal relevance of some such features. Such features have been thought causally relevant in many examples that have underpinned philosophical work on causality. Additionally, in certain typical biological cases, (...) we conceive of causally relevant features at various compatible levels of analysis. When elaborated, these points make a strong prima facie case for macro-level causal relevance. However, we might abandon both the philosophical guideposts and the corresponding explanatory practice in the special sciences were we convinced that no reflective philosophical account could provide for the causal relevance there supposed. I show that such drastic measures are not necessary, for we can make sense of macro-level causal relevance by drawing on Paul Humphreys' recent work in ways suggested by the concrete examples considered here. (shrink)

Albert Schweitzer preached a message of reverence for life - all life - that touched the hearts of a generation. As a medical doctor in French Equatorial Africa who selflessly helped those in need, Schweitzer was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize in the wake of two world wars. But less than fifty years since the time of his death, the great humanitarian and scholar has faded from public awareness. In The New Rationalism, David Goodin explores the underlying philosophy (...) behind Schweitzer's ethic of compassion, presenting it as a response to contemporary questions in social justice, economic equality, and environmental action. For the first time, the political, sociological, and philosophical contexts supporting the development of Schweitzer's ethic are examined in order to bring his timeless message of elemental morality to new life for the modern world. Inspired by Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, Schweitzer built his ethic to create an elemental nature philosophy compatible with empirical science, and to support a new ontological understanding of the human person - a project he termed the New Rationalism. Goodin recovers and analyzes Schweitzer's arguments and shows where his theories can provide a framework for both environmental and civic ethics today. (shrink)

is the second-order theory of the part-whole relation. It can express such hypotheses about the size of Reality as that there are inaccessibly many atoms. Take a non-empty class to have exactly its non-empty subclasses as parts; hence, its singleton subclasses as atomic parts. Then standard set theory becomes the theory of the member-singleton function—better, the theory of all singleton functions—within the framework of megethology. Given inaccessibly many atoms and a specification of which atoms are urelements, a singleton function exists, (...) unique up to isomorphism. (This article is partly abridged from my Parts of Classes, partly a sequel.). (shrink)

Despite criticism that dignity is a vague and slippery concept, a number of international guidelines on bioethics have cautioned against research that is contrary to human dignity, with reference specifically to genetic technology. What is the connection between genetic research and human dignity? In this article, I investigate the concept of human dignity in its various historical forms, and examine its status as a moral concept. Unlike Kant's ideal concept of human dignity, the empirical or relational concept takes human dignity (...) as something that is affected by one's circumstances and what others do. I argue that the dignity objection to some forms of genetic research rests on a view of human nature that gives humans a special status in nature – one that is threatened by the potential of genetic research to reduce individuals to their genetic endowment. I distinguish two main philosophical accounts of human nature. One of these, the Aristotelian view, is compatible with the use of genetic technology to help humans realize their inherent potential to a fuller extent. (shrink)