Movatterモバイル変換

Notes toDavid Lewis’s Metaphysics

1. A significant oversimplification of Lewis’s actual view, as willbe apparent in the (forthcoming) article on Lewis’s appliedmetaphysics.

2. Note that all Lewis means by “Nominalist” here is one whodenies the existence of universals.

3. Phillip Bricker has pointed out (personal communication) that thisconstraint injects “a kind of arbitrariness into logical space.For example, if there are perfectly natural asymmetric relations (suchas ‘is earlier than’), the converse of such a relation(‘is later than’) could not also be perfectlynatural.” As Bricker further notes, Lewis seems not to havenoticed this consequence.

4. A bit more carefully, its intrinsic nature is exhausted by theperfectly natural properties it instantiates, together with theperfectly natural properties and relations instantiated by itsparts. Of course the simpler formulation will do if we aretalking aboutfundamental particulars, as they have no properparts.

5. Again, a bit more carefully:x andy are perfect duplicates just incase they and their parts can be put into a one-to-one correspondencethat preserves the facts about which perfectly natural properties andrelations are instantiated.

6. As Phillip Bricker has pointed out, this statement needs aqualification. For Lewis considers it an open epistemic possibilitythat there are two (or more) metaphysically possible worlds that areperfect duplicates of each other. And he holds that propositionssimplyare sets of possible worlds. If the given epistemicpossibility in fact obtains, then there will automatically bepropositions—the unit-sets of duplicate worlds—that varyin truth value between two worlds, which worlds themselves do notdiffer with respect to the geometrical arrangement of their spacetimepoints, or with respect to which perfectly natural properties areinstantiated at those points. So Lewis needs a way to slightlyrestrict the scope of the thesis. He does not always notice this need.For example, discussing Humean Supervenience in his 1994, he writes,without qualification “I claim that all contingent truthsupervenes just on the pattern of coinstantiation…” (p.474).

7. Lewis cites a brief 1961discussion in Kripke (2017, 230–32) on the analogy between identitythrough time and identity across worlds as an important influence (seeBeebee and Fisher 2020: Letter 121 and Letter 527). Lewisexploited the analogy mapping his perdurantist account of identityacross time over to possible worlds and their inhabitants. The sciencefiction of L. Sprague de Camp (e.g. 1940, “The Wheels ofIf”,Unknown Fantasy Fiction, Street & Smith) seemsto also have provided some inspiration. Lewis, at least, credits deCamp with the locution that someone’s counterpart istheperson they would have been if the world had been otherwise(Lewis 1968, 115, fn. 3). An anticipation of keycounterpart-theroretic ideas occur in a letter by Peter Geach—ina 1964 letter to A.N. Prior, Geach suggests a treatment ofdere modality in terms of “replacements” which, thoughbrief and incomplete, is interestingly similar to Lewis’ ownaccount (see David Lewis Papers, C1520, ‘Prior, A.N.’ BoxB-000673, Folder 3, Princeton University Library). Lewis only saw theGeach letter in 1967 after having already developed his counterparttheory (see Beebee and Fisher 2020: Letter 124). Notably, Geachexplicitly links his idea of replacements with the different SextiTarquinii of Leibniz’s fable concerning the palace of thefates.

8. For example, Leibniz’s discussion of “an infinity ofpossible Adams” (see Letters to Arnauld,PhilosophicalEssays,72–73, translated and edited byAriew and Garber, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), as well as in hisparable concerning the palace of the fates. Leibniz says that indifferent possible worlds there are Sexti who resemble the actualSextus but also differ from him in certain ways – “aSextus, indeed, of every kind and endless diversity of forms”(Leibniz’sTheodicy §414, translated byHuggard, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1985). Lewis never exploredthe relation between his views and the views of Leibniz. He only madethe following comment: “[W]hen I read what serious historians ofphilosophy have to say, I am persuaded that it is no easy matter toknow what his views were. It would be nice to have the right sort oftalent and training to join in the work of exegesis, but it is veryclear to me that I do not. Anything I might say about Leibniz would beamateurish, undeserving of others’ attention, and better leftunsaid.” (Lewis 1986e, viii).

9. For properties, Lewis prefers an account with simple trans-worldidentity (Lewis 2009). See Heller (1998) and Heller (2005) for acounterpart-theoretic alternative.

Notes to theSupplement on Reduction

10. Together, perhaps, with a “totality” fact to the effectthat these areall the pixels.

11. Though, in an earlier version of this essay, I managed to completelyoverlook it, its obviousness notwithstanding. Thanks to PhillipBricker for pointing it out to me.

Notes to theSupplement on Physicalism

12. Lewis provides various reasons for thinking that physicalism involvesmore than this; we won’t go into them.

Notes to theSupplement on Humean Supervenience

13. For howcould you view them as base-level, without alreadybelieving in multiply-located particulars—hence, without alreadyabandoning spacetime monism?

Notes to theSupplement on Physical Magnitudes

14. Along with many others: e.g., Maudlin considers magnitudes whosevalues are represented by fiber bundles.