9:19 5 corollary it’s poss nec A implies it’s nec A (one way to read: whatever is possibly necessary is necessary)
10:40 B corollary it’s poss nec A implies A is in fact the case (one way to read: whatever is possibly necessary is in fact the case)
Question: If whatever is necessary is in fact the case (Axiom M), why are only one of those corollaries controversial? Modal ontological argument? Why only one results in it?
a long long time ago i had to do a bunch of this stuff and the first thing that came to mind here for me was lewis and his possible world semantics. if something is possible, then its necessary in some possible world. (but not necessarily in the actual one)
about the 2nd one, lewis would argue that all possible worlds are concrete, and therefore actual (for their inhabitants). so if it’s possible that something is necessary, then it is in fact the case in whatever possible world where it “obtains”.
possible worlds for lewis are concrete, non spatiotemporal, something something indexical, something something rigid designation something something trans world heir lines
stalnaker thinks you just need one actual world and one possible world and that you can boom shakalaka do a counterfactual anaylsis, but lewis is like nahhh bruh you need infinte possible worlds in order to have like a whole ontology or something. since time is indexical and um…coordination problems…there are infinite possibilities and therefore we’ve gotta do more for the ontology and just having one possible world for counterfactual analysis is cool and all but we’re gonna need an infinite number to of them to account for everything that is was and might be the case
i am sincerely sorry that you are having to go through this
are they giving you any hintikka?
This is not homework. I am not in school. I just watched the random video and I had questions.
It’s really sad that I am coming to this late. It’s really sad that you can’t just upload everything to your brain like in the matrix. And that it doesn’t just stick.
It feels like I have studied that possible worlds stuff before but probably not very in-depth.
just dive on into some david lewis. he’s all about that modal logic and he tricks you into understanding it by telling stories about his cat bruce
on the plurality of worlds is the one where he lays out his modal realism stuff. papers in ethics and social philosophy is good because it’s an anthology and each paper kind of helps you get a lot of insight into his approach and some of his assumptions. if you are bored enough to go through those, then the plurality or worlds will make more sense. he also did one called convention which is interesting and relatively approachable and that i would recommend if you wanna dive off into his whole schtick. the guy might be one of the most high functioning logical brain types to have written a book in the last few decades.
there’s another one called papers in metaphysics and epistemology that is also good but easy to disagree with so you have to really give him some time and the benefit of the doubt if you want to just really look at what he’s doing. one paper called reduction of mind lays out something that i think he called his “reductive materialist” stance on the mind/body problem. sometimes people see proposed solutions to that problem and immediately take it as though someone is trying to cancel out the soul but a)he’s not really doing that and b) he is extraordinarily eloquent and takes great care to work within a consistent system as far as the way he analyzes things.
he did have a back and fourth with alvin plantinga about the problem of evil which might be interesting. its a quick read and is within the framework of a debate about religion which might make it easily digestible since i think you think about religious stuff. he basically tries to use game theoretical arguments to reinforce the problem of evil. i think its called “Evil for freedom’s sake?”
in the video at 13:00 he says it seems strange that if something is possible that it necessarily exists. and i dont think it seems strange at all. here is why. if youre constructing an ontology with a capital O, then it has to include everything. so everything has to exist, that’s why infinite possible worlds are necessary to form such an ontology. you’ve gotta have a place to put all the everything, even the things that aren’t “actual”.
what “exists” is whatever can be extrapolated, envisioned, known by extension of, deduced from, inferred by the most basic and native principles of logic. things that can conform to an identity theory, and that can be understood in terms of reductionism and functionalism.
things that don’t fit those criteria are impossible, and have to go to an impossible world, which once they’re there have been properly categorized for the purpose of the ontology. even impossible things exist, just in impossible worlds.
as a person who is going around doing epistomology your goal is to determine which world you’re in and what is in it. you call that one the actual world. so you do science. you observe things, draw identities, and then describe them in terms of reductions and functions. the idea is that you theorize and determine the nature of the world you’re in and the things that aren’t there are either in another possible world, (assuming they fit those criteria) or they are impossible. if in the process of observing you encounter new things, then you expand your understanding of the actual world, (the one youre in).
you know how in particle physics they’ll have everything all figured out but the only way the whole thing makes sense is if a speculative particle that hasn’t been discovered yet is real? so they build a whole understanding of the world around something like a higgs boson? that’s kind of how possible worlds are for lewis. they’re the part of the whole thing that makes it all work. the proof of them is that the shit doesn’t make sense without referring to them.
Would you say a possibility, if not actual, is a privation that may be fulfilled eventually?
if it can happen, it might actually happen. whether it actually happens depends on whether you can tell its happening in the world youre in. but it will happen in some possible world.
so yes, it may eventually.
it will ACTUALLY happen in some possible world?
This is where my brain explodes because when I think about all this it feels very multiverse-y, and that doesn’t feel like what folks mean to be talking about.
we spent a lot of time thinking about the difference between could and might. if i’m reaching into my pocket for a quarter, it might happen that pull one out. it could happen if there’s one in there.
things only actually happen to people in the world that they’re in. so yes. but not for you unless youre in that world.