Dear Avril, (01)
> >> I do not... think that it is necessary to treat other worlds besides
> >> this one as anything more than convenient fictions. The reason why we
> >> need not take the worlds realistically is that they have no causal or
> >> nomic links with the actual world. ... The actual world will be no
> >> different whether they are there or are not. Why, then, give the
> >> possible worlds ... any existence? Armstrong [211, p68]
> >
> > MW: Which I would refute by saying "Why commit to denying them existence?"
>
> Perhaps only because of simplicity. (02)
MW: But the simplest thing is not to make a commitment at all. (03)
> If one thinks of them as really existing,
> then they are somewhat similar than the platonic heaven of all mathematial
> entities. (04)
MW: Not necessarily though. It is certainly not how I would think of them
existing if they do. (05)
> Platonic mathematicians think that all mathematical entities really
> exist in the heaven, awaiting to be discovered. This is uneconomical compared
> to naturalism, as depicted in the attached image. The uneconomicality derives
> from the fact that the necessarily inaccessible worlds/heaven occupies a space
> in the limited mind of a transcendentalist/platonist, while they do not occupy
> the limited space of the mind of a naturalist. In the figure, the examplatory
> object is a circle. For a naturalist, the circle exist in the mind and in the
> concrete nature. For a transcendentalist, the circle exists in the mind, in
> the concrete nature, and in the heaven.
> But when the transcendentalist scenario is put into a naturalist mapping, it
> is revealed that the heaven exists only in the mind of the trascendentalist,
> which is uneconomical compared to naturalism.
>
> >> As Jaegwon Kim has pointed out, an existence without causal powers is
> >> an existence hardly worth having. Pylkkänen [112, p235]
> >
> > MW: I'm afraid that is irrelevant, and it is not clear that possible
> > worlds do not have causal powers simply by our consideration of them.
>
> As Sowa said, if they are defined to be necessarily inaccessible, then they
> cannot affect this world; if they do affect this world, then they are not
> inaccessible, but parts of this world. (06)
MW: Those are not the only possibilities. They can have parts that are
accessible in both worlds. For example, if you allow branching worlds, then two
possible worlds can share a common history, but be distinct.
>
> >> But if the entities postulated lie beyond our world, and in addition
> >> have no causal ... connection with it, then the postulation has no
> >> explanatory value. Armstrong [151, p7-8]
> >
> > MW: Which is clearly untrue from the considerable utility that
> > possible worlds have, so this is a spurious argument.
>
> Armstrong practices combinatorialist fictionalism, and in that domain the
> possible worlds are recombinations of the actual world. This can be
> characterized as combinatiorialism that applies the term ``possible worlds''. (07)
MW: That is just a different set of unnecessary commitments. (08)
> But in the above quote he just emphasizes that if something is necessarily
> inaccessible to us, then it cannot affect us in any way, not even in
> principle. (09)
MW: But that is not a proof of non-existence (or existence). And I challenge
that such things do not affect us, or else they would have no utility, and they
clearly do have. (010)
Regards (011)
Matthew West
Information Junction
Tel: +44 1489 880185
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Skype: dr.matthew.west
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/ (012)
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>
> -Avril
>
>
> (014)
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