Re: [ontolog-forum] intangibles (was RE: Why most classifications are fu

[sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Chris,

I'm delighted to hear that:

CM
> Sorry, I garbled that. Lewis argues that belief in worlds is justified so
> long as there is NO theory that has similar explanatory value but less of
> an ontological cost.

Fortunately, Micheal Dunn showed that any conclusion or explanation that could be derived from talk about possible worlds can be derived in an exactly equivalent way without assuming the existence of possible worlds.

Just replace each world w with the set F of propositions that are true about w (facts of w) and a subset L of F called the laws of w.

Every argument that can be stated in terms of  w can be rephrased in  terms of  the pair (L,F) without any  loss or distortion.

John

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