The ersatz pluriverse

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 99, Issue 6, 2002, Pages 279-315

  Sider, Theodore ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34247612884     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3655585     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. On the Plurality of Worlds (New York: Blackwell, 1986).
2. See G. E. Hughes and M. J. Cresswell, A New Introduction to Modal Logic(New York: Routledge, 1996).
3. The Worlds of Possibility (New York: Oxford, 1998).
4. "New Work for a Theory of Universals," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, LXI (1983): 343-77; especially pp. 361-65.
5. See Allen Hazen, "Expressive Completeness in Modal Languages,"Journal of Philosophical Logic, v (1976): 25-46, especially section 3.
6. Even if one enriches modal predicate logic in various ways - for examplewith an actuality operator, or even the bolder enhancements of Graeme Forbes,The Metaphysics of Modality (New York: Oxford, 1985), pp. 90-93 - it is far fromclear how to simulate full quantification over set-theoretic constructions ofpossibilia.
7. See Lewis, "Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic,"this JOURNAL, LXV, 5 (March 7, 1968): 113-26.
8. See Phillip Bricker, "Reducing Possible Worlds to Language,"Philosophical Studies, LII (1987): 331-55, especially pp. 343-49;
9. and M. A. Dickmann, Large Infinitary Languages: Model Theory (Amsterdam:North-Holland, 1975).
10. See Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, pp. 145-46.
11. Alan McMichael, "A Problem for Actualism about Possible Worlds," Philosophical Review XCII (1983): 49-66.
12. For excellent survey and discussion, see Hazen, "Actualism Again," Philosophical Studies, LXXXIV (1996): 155-81,
13. and Daniel Nolan, Topics in the Philosophy of Possible Worlds (New York:Routledge, 2002), chapter 5.
14. An analogous reply may be made to the objects version of the problem ofdescriptive power, based on uninstantiated individual essences, as in section 5of Alvin Plantinga, "Actualism and Possible Worlds," Theoria, XLII(1976): 139-60.
15. The criticisms in the text apply to this reply as well; but there areadditional problems: see section 2 of Robert Merrihew Adams, "Actualism and Thisness," Synthese, XLIX (1981): 3-41,
16. and Kit Fine, "Plantinga on the Reduction of Possibilist Discourse," in J. Tomberlin and P. van Inwagen, eds., Alvin Plantinga(Boston: Reidel, 1985), pp. 145-86, especially sections 2 and 3.
17. A World of States of Affairs (New York: Cambridge, 1997);
18. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction (Boulder: Westview, 1989);
19. Universals and Scientific Realism, Volumes I and II (New York: Cambridge,1978).
20. Causation: A Realist Approach (New York: Oxford, 1987), especially section3.1.4, pp. 119-20.
21. "On What There Is," in his From a Logical Point of View(Cambridge: Harvard, 1953), pp. 1-19.
22. Shoemaker, "Causality and Properties," in Peter van Inwagen,ed., Time and Cause: Essays Presented to Richard Taylor (Boston: Reidel, 1980),pp. 109-35;
23. Swoyer, "The Nature of Natural Laws," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, LX (1982): 203-23.
24. See Mark Heller, "Property Counterparts in Ersatz Worlds," this JOURNAL, XCV, 6 (June 1998): 293-316.
25. See Adams, "Theories of Actuality," Noûs, VIII (1974):211-31;
26. Plantinga; and Robert Stalnaker, "Possible Worlds," Noûs,X (1976): 65-75.
27. and Rosen ("Modal Fictionalism," Mind, XCIX (1990): 327-54) areexceptions.
28. See Adams, "Theories of Actuality"; Plantinga; Stalnaker;Armstrong, A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility (New York: Cambridge, 1989).
29. See Lewis, "Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies," this JOURNAL, LXVIII, 7 (April 8, 1971): 203-11.
30. Compare Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, p. 238.
31. I think we do make nonvacuous sense of at least some counterpossibles, though it is an open question whether there are counterpossibles rich enough toground the proposed definition. See Jeffrey Goodman, "Extended Ersatz Realism," forthcoming in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly;
32. William Lycan, Modality and Meaning (Boston: Kluwer, 1994), pp. 38-39;
33. and Takashi Yagasawa, "Beyond Possible Worlds," Philosophical Studies, LIII (1987): 175-204.
34. On the Plurality of Worlds, pp. 102-04.
35. For contrary arguments, see Bricker, "Plenitude of Possible Structures," this JOURNAL, LXXXVIII, 11 (November 1991): 607-19;
36. See, for example, Quine, "New Foundations for Mathematical Logic," in his From a Logical Point of View, pp. 80-101;
37. and Greg Restall, "A Note on Naive Set Theory in LP," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, XXXIII (1992): 422-32.
38. See Paul Bernays, "A System of Axiomatic Set Theory," in G.Muller, ed., Sets and Classes (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1976), pp. 1-119;
39. and Kurt Gödel, The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and of the Generalized Continuum-Hypothesis with the Axioms of Set Theory (Princeton:University Press, 1940).
40. I favor an analogous response to Kripke's Humphrey objection tocounterpart theory; see Naming and Necessity (Cambridge: Harvard, 1972), p. 45;
41. and Hazen, "Counterpart-Theoretic Semantics for Modal Logic,"this JOURNAL, LXXVI, 6 (June 1979): 319-38.
42. "First-Order Modal Theories, Part I - Sets," Noûs, XV(1981): 117-206;
43. and "First-Order Modal Theories, Part III - Facts," Synthese,LIII (1982): 43-122.
44. "Modal Fictionalism," Mind, XCIX (1990): 327-54.