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realism seriously although he did regret his choice of the expression modal realism he also insisted that his claims should be taken literally by what right do we call possible worlds and their inhabitants disreputable entities unfit for philosophical services unless they can beg redemption from philosophy of language i know of no accusation against possibles that cannot be made with equal justice against sets yet few philosophical consciences scruple at set theory sets and possibles alike make for a crowded ontology sets and possibles alike raise questions we have no way to answer i propose to be equally undisturbed by these equally mysterious mysteries 5 how many possible worlds are there in what respects do they vary and what is common to them all do they obey a nontrivial law of identity of indiscernibles here i am at a disadvantage compared to someone who pretends as a figure of speech to believe in possible worlds but really does not if worlds were creatures of my imagination i could imagine them to be any way i liked and i could tell you all you wished to hear simply by carrying on my imaginative creation but as i believe that there really are other worlds i am entitled to confess that there is much about them that i do not know and that i do not know how to find out 6 extended modal realism edit main article extended modal realism extended modal realism as developed by takashi yagisawa 7 differs from other versions of modal realism such as david lewis views in several important aspects possible worlds are conceived as points or indices of the modal dimension rather than as isolated space time structures regular objects are extended not only in the spatial and the temporal dimensions but also in the modal dimension some of their parts are modal parts i e belong to non actual worlds the concept of modal parts is best explained in analogy to spatial and temporal parts 8 9 a person s hand is a spatial part of them just as their childhood is a temporal part according to four dimensionalism 10 these intuitions can be extended to the modal dimension by considering possible versions of the person which took different choices in life than they actually did according to extended modal realism these other selves are inhabitants of different possible worlds and are also parts of the self modal parts 7 41 11 another difference to the lewisian form of modal realism is that among non actual worlds within the modal dimension are not just possible worlds but also impossible worlds yagisawa holds that while the notion of a world is simple being a modal index the notion of a possible world is composite it is a world that is possible possibility can be understood in various ways there is logical possibility metaphysical possibility physical possibility etc 8 12 a world is possible if it doesn t violate the laws of the corresponding type of possibility for example a world is logically possible if it obeys the laws of logic or physically possible if it obeys the laws of nature worlds that don t obey these laws are impossible worlds but impossible worlds and their inhabitants are just as real as possible or actual entities arguments for modal realism edit reasons given by lewis edit lewis backs modal realism for a variety of reasons 3 first there doesn t seem to be a reason not to many abstract mathematical entities are held to exist simply because they are useful for example sets are useful abstract mathematical constructs that were only conceived in the 19th century sets are now considered to be objects in their own right and while this is a philosophically unintuitive idea its usefulness in understanding the workings of mathematics makes belief in it worthwhile the same should go for possible worlds since these constructs have helped us make sense of key philosophical concepts in epistemology metaphysics philosophy of mind etc their existence should be accepted on pragmatic grounds lewis believes that the concept of alethic modality can be reduced to talk of real possible worlds for example to say x is possible is to say that there exists a possible world where x is true to say x is necessary is to say that in all possible worlds x is true the appeal to possible worlds provides a sort of economy with the least number of undefined primitives axioms in our ontology taking this latter point one step further lewis argues that modality cannot be made sense of without such a reduction he maintains that we cannot determine that x is possible without a conception of what a real world where x holds would look like in deciding whether it is possible for basketballs to be inside of atoms we do not simply make a linguistic determination of whether the proposition is grammatically coherent we actually think about whether a real world would be able to sustain such a state of affairs thus we require a brand of modal realism if we are to use modality at all argument from ways edit an often cited argument is called the argument from ways it defines possible worlds as ways how things could have been and relies for its premises and inferences on assumptions from natural language 13 14 15 for example 1 hillary clinton could have won the 2016 us election 2 so there are other ways how things could have been 3 possible worlds are ways how things could have been 4 so there are other possible worlds the central step of this argument happens at 2 where the plausible 1 is interpreted in a way that involves quantification over ways many philosophers following willard van orman quine 16 hold that quantification entails ontological commitments in this case a commitment to the existence of possible worlds quine himself restricted his method to scientific theories but others have applied it also to natural language for example amie l thomasson in her easy approach to ontology 17 the strength of the argument from ways depends on these assumptions and may be challenged by casting doubt on the quantifier method of ontology or on the reliability of natural language as a guide to ontology criticisms edit a number of philosophers including lewis himself have produced criticisms of what some call extreme realism about possible worlds peter forrest argues that modal realism gives us reason to doubt the method of induction as according to modal realism there is a world where we are deceived by our senses and we may be in this world 18 james f ross argues that when lewis states that counterfactual utterances are true in the sense that it is the case in another world that such a thing occurred he parses away our counterfactual utterances into what we do not mean 19 hilary putnam likewise writes one doesn t have to think of a way the world could have been as another world and asks why one couldn t say that a way the world could be is just a property a characteristic however complicated that the whole world could have had rather than another world of the same sort as our own 20 lewis s own critique edit lewis s own extended presentation of the theory on the plurality of worlds 1986 raises and then counters several lines of argument against it that work introduces not only the theory but its reception among philosophers the many objections that continue to be published are typically variations on one or other of the lines that lewis has already canvassed here are some of the major categories of objection catastrophic counterintuitiveness the theory does not accord with our deepest intuitions about reality this is sometimes called the incredulous stare since it lacks argumentative content and is merely an expression of the affront that the theory represents to common sense philosophical and pre philosophical orthodoxy lewis is concerned to support the deliverances of common sense in general common sense is a settled body of theory unsystematic folk theory which at any rate we do believe and i presume that we are reasonable to believe it most of it 1986 p 134 but most of it is not all of it otherwise there would be no place for philosophy at all and lewis finds that reasonable argument and the weight of such considerations as theoretical efficiency compel us to accept modal realism the alternatives he argues at length can themselves be shown to yield conclusions offensive to our modal intuitions inflated ontology some 21 object that modal realism postulates vastly too many entities compared with other theories it is therefore they argue vulnerable to occam s razor according to which we should prefer all things being equal those theories that postulate the smallest number of entities lewis s reply is that all things are not equal and in particular competing accounts of possible worlds themselves postulate more classes of entities since there must be not only one real concrete world the actual world but many worlds of a different class altogether abstract in some way or other too many worlds this is perhaps a variant of the previous category but it relies on appeals to mathematical propriety rather than occamist principles some argue that lewis s principles of worldmaking means by which we might establish the existence of further worlds by recombination of parts of worlds we already think exist are too permissive so permissive are they that the total number of worlds must exceed what is mathematically coherent lewis allows that there are difficulties and subtleties to address on this front 1986 pp 89 90 daniel nolan recombination unbound philosophical studies 1996 vol 84 pp 239 262 mounts a sustained argument against certain forms of the objection but variations on it continue to appear island universes on the version of his theory that lewis strongly favours each world is distinct from every other world by being spatially and temporally isolated from it some have objected that a world in which spatio temporally isolated universes island universes coexist is therefore not possible by lewis s theory see for example bigelow john and pargetter robert beyond the blank stare theoria 1987 vol 53 pp 97 114 lewis s awareness of this difficulty discomforted him but he could have replied that other means of distinguishing worlds may be available or alternatively that sometimes there will inevitably be further surprising and counterintuitive consequences beyond what we had thought we would be committed to at the start of our investigation but this fact in itself is hardly surprising alvin plantinga also wonders why we would think that possibility is grounded in some other multi verse counterpart to me if we were to discover other universes if not then why think the same would apply to possible worlds as a whole 22 finally some of these objections can be combined for example one 23 can think that modal realism is unnecessary because multiverse theory can do all the modal work e g many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics 23 a pervasive theme in lewis s replies to the critics of modal realism is the use of tu quoque argument your account would fail in just the same way that you claim mine would a major heuristic virtue of lewis s theory is that it is sufficiently definite for objections to gain some foothold but these objections once clearly articulated can then be turned equally against other theories of the ontology and epistemology of possible worlds stalnaker s response edit robert stalnaker while he finds some merit in lewis s account of possible worlds finds the position to be ultimately untenable he himself advances a more moderate realism about possible worlds which he terms actualism since it holds that all that exists is in fact actual and that there are no merely possible entities 24 in particular stalnaker does not accept lewis s attempt to argue on the basis of a supposed analogy with the epistemological objection to mathematical platonism that believing in possible worlds as lewis imagines them is no less reasonable than believing in mathematical entities such as sets or functions 25 kripke s response edit saul kripke described modal realism as totally misguided wrong and objectionable 26 kripke argued that possible worlds were not like distant countries out there to be discovered rather we stipulate what is true according to them kripke also criticized modal realism for its reliance on counterpart theory which he regarded as untenable specifically kripke states that lewis modal realism implies that when we refer to possibilities regarding persons like you or me we re not referring to you or me instead we re referring to counterparts who are similar to us but not identical this seems problematic because it seems like when for example we say that humphrey could have become president we are talking about humphrey and we re not talking about a person that is like humphrey 27 lewis responds by saying this objection i e the humphrey objection wouldn t apply to modal realists who believe that the identity of persons can overlap in multiple worlds even though lewis thinks that view is problematic 28 secondly lewis doesn t seem to share the intuition that there is any problem as evidenced by the fact that he calls it an alleged intuition 29 argument from morality edit the argument from morality as initially formulated by robert merrihew adams 30 criticizes modal realism on the grounds that modal realism has very implausible consequences for morality and should therefore be rejected this can be seen by considering the principle of plenitude the thesis that there is a possible world for every way things could be 31 32 the consequence of this principle is that the nature of the pluriverse i e of reality in the widest sense is fixed this means that whatever choices human agents make they have no impact on reality as a whole 18 for example assume that during a stroll at a lake you spot a drowning child not far from the shore you have a choice to save the child or not if you choose to save the child then a counterpart of you at another possible world chooses to let it drown if you choose to let it drown then the counterpart of you at this other possible world chooses to save it either way the result for these two possible worlds is the same one child drowns and the other is saved the only impact of your choice is to relocate a death from the actual world to another possible world 33 but since according to modal realism there is no important difference between the actual world and other possible worlds this shouldn t matter the consequence would be that there is no moral obligation to save the child which is drastically at odds with common sense morality worse still this argument can be generalized to any decision so whatever you choose in any decision would be morally permissible 34 david lewis defends modal realism against this argument by pointing out that morality as commonly conceived is only interested in the actual world specifically that the actual agent doesn t do evil so the argument from morality would only be problematic for an odd version of utilitarianism aiming at...
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