One concrete way of understanding possible worlds is that a possible
world is a mapping from space-time points to "states" (mass, energy,
whatever) (e.g., hydrogen atom at (x,y,z,t), under certain physical
constraints (which distinguish the possible from the impossible). Under
this interpretation, a possible world is exactly as real as any mapping,
e.g., the square root function. (01)
-- Jerry (02)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- (03)
Chris, (04)
I'm delighted to hear that: (05)
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. (06)
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. (07)
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. (08)
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. (09)
John (010)
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