Combining the Best of Two Possible Worlds

1991 ◽  
Vol 36 (12) ◽  
pp. 1057-1058
Author(s):  
Marvin R. Goldfried ◽  
Douglas A. Vakoch
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds

Multiple Strands and Possible Worlds

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-61
Author(s):  
Ruth Perlmutter
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds

The Failure of Conceptual Analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer McKitrick
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics ◽  
Conditional Statements ◽  
Reductive Analysis

Dispositions are often regarded with suspicion. Consequently, some philosophers try to semantically reduce disposition ascriptions to sentences containing only non-dispositional vocabulary. Typically, reductionists attempt to analyze disposition ascriptions in terms of conditional statements. These conditional statements, like other modal claims, are often interpreted in terms of possible worlds semantics. However, conditional analyses are subject to a number of problems and counterexamples, including random coincidences, void satisfaction, masks, antidotes, mimics, altering, and finks. Some analyses fail to reduce disposition ascriptions to non-modal vocabulary. If reductive analysis of disposition ascriptions fails, then perhaps there can be metaphysical reduction of dispositions without semantic reduction. However, the reductionist still owes us an account of what makes disposition ascriptions true. But to posit a causal power for every unreduced dispositional predicate is an overreaction to the failure of conceptual analysis.

Is There Life in Possible Worlds?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Machine Design ◽  
Lagrangian Mechanics ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Search Spaces ◽  
Dimensional Modeling ◽  
Lower Dimensional

Scientists have developed various collections of specialized possibilities to serve as search spaces in which excessive reliance upon speculative forms of lower dimensional modeling or other unwanted details can be skirted. Two primary examples are discussed: the search spaces of machine design and the virtual variations utilized within Lagrangian mechanics. Contemporary appeals to “possible worlds” attempt to imbed these localized possibilities within fully enunciated universes. But not all possibilities are made alike and these reductive schemes should be resisted, on the grounds that they render the utilities of everyday counterfactuals and “possibility” talk incomprehensible. The essay also discusses whether Wittgenstein’s altered views in his Philosophical Investigations reflect similar concerns.

Pythagorean Women Philosophers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorota M. Dutsch
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
First Century ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Female Voices ◽  
Grant Agency ◽  
Women Philosophers ◽  
Historical Accounts

Modern scholarly accounts of Greek philosophical history usually exclude women. And yet, from Dixaearchus of Messana to Diogenes Laertius, classical writers record the names of women philosophers from various schools. What is more, pseudonymous treatises and letters (likely dating after the first century CE) articulate the teachings of Pythagorean women. How can this literature inform our understanding of Greek intellectual history? To take these texts at face value would be naïve; to reject them, narrow-minded. This book is a deep examination of the literary tradition surrounding female Pythagoreans; it envisions the tradition as a network of texts that does not represent female philosophers but enacts their role in Greek culture. Part I, “Portraits,” assembles and contextualizes excerpts from historical accounts and wisdom literature. Part II, “Impersonations,” analyzes pseudonymous treatises and letters. Texts are approached with a mixture of suspicion and belief, inspired by Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics. Suspicion serves to disclose the misogyny of the epistemic regimes that produced the texts about and by women philosophers. Belief takes us beyond the circumstances of the texts’ production to possible worlds of diverse readers, institutions, and practices that grant agency to the female knower. In the process, the book uncovers traces of a fascinating dialogue about the gender of philosophical knowledge, which includes female voices.

scholarly journals ‘Your duplicitous point of view’: Delayed revelations of hypothetical focalisation in Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Sweet Tooth

2021 ◽  
pp. 096394702110097
Author(s):  
Naomi Adam
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Possible Worlds Theory ◽  
Ian Mcewan

Framed by cognitive-poetic and possible worlds theories, this article explores two 21st century novels by the British postmodernist author Ian McEwan. Building upon Ryan’s (1991) seminal conceptualisation of the theory in relation to literature and using the novels as case studies, possible worlds theory is used to explain the unique and destabilising stylistic effects at play in the texts, which result in a ‘duplicitous point of view’ and consequent disorientation for the reader. With reference to the stylistically deviant texts of McEwan, it is argued that revisions to current theoretical frameworks are warranted. Most significantly, the concepts of suppositious text-possible worlds and (total) frame readjustment are introduced. Further to this, neuropsychiatric research is applied to the novels, highlighting the potential for interdisciplinary overlap in the study of narrative focalisation. It is concluded that the duplicity integral to both novels’ themes and texture is effected through artful use of hypothetical focalisation and suppositious text-possible worlds.

scholarly journals Where are possible worlds? (arguments for ReALIS)

2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
GÁbor Alberti ◽  
Judit Kleiber
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds

Escape

Philosophy ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 15 (60) ◽  
pp. 386-399
Author(s):  
W. R. Inge
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Walt Whitman

There are times when we are so much in harmony with our surroundings that we are content to bask in the sunshine and to say to the passing hour, like Faust, “Stay with us; you are so fair.” There have been times when whole nations, or the most vocal part of them, have believed themselves to be living in a world which, if not the best of all possible worlds, is an abode from which they have no desire to escape. They are being challenged, for, as Walt Whitman says, “it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.” But the challenge is unheeded, and the price is demanded later.Ubi nil timetur, quod timeatur nascitur.

Are propositions sets of possible worlds?

Analysis ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds

Still the American Century

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 271-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRUCE CUMINGS
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Federal Budget ◽  
The United States ◽  
Surprising Result ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
American Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
Year 2000

At the inception of the twenty-first century—not to mention the next millennium—books on ‘the American Century’ proliferate monthly, if not daily. We now have The American Century Dictionary, The American Century Thesaurus, and even The American Century Cookbook; perhaps the American Century baseball cap or cologne is not far behind. With one or two exceptions, the authors celebrate the unipolar pre-eminence and comprehensive economic advantage that the United States now enjoys. Surveys of public opinion show that most people agree: the American wave appears to be surging just as the year 2000 beckons. Unemployment and inflation are both at twenty-year lows, sending economists (who say you can't get lows for both at the same time) back to the drawing board. The stock market roars past the magic 10,000 mark, and the monster federal budget deficit of a decade ago miraculously metamorphoses into a surplus that may soon reach upwards of $1 trillion. Meanwhile President William Jefferson Clinton, not long after a humiliating impeachment, is rated in 1999 as the best of all postwar presidents in conducting foreign policy (a dizzying ascent from eighth place in 1994), according to a nationwide poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. This surprising result might also, of course, bespeak inattention: when asked to name the two or three most important foreign policy issues facing the US, fully 21 per cent of the public couldn't think of one (they answered ‘don't know’), and a mere seven per cent thought foreign policy issues were important to the nation. But who cares, when all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds?

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