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Lewis’ Reduction of Modality

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Abstract

I start by reconsidering two familiar arguments against modal realism. The argument from epistemology relates to the issue whether we can infer the existence of concrete objects by a priori means. The argument from pragmatics purports to refute the analogy between the indispensability of possible worlds and the indispensability of unobserved entities in physical science and of numbers in mathematics. Then I present two novel objections. One focusses on the obscurity of the notion of isolation required by modal realism. The other stresses the arbitrary nature of the rules governing the behaviour of Lewisean universes. All four objections attack the reductive analysis of modality that is supposed to be the chief merit of modal realism.

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Notes

  1. See Lewis (1986:94–6).

  2. See Lewis (1986:2,73) and Bigelow and Pargetter (1987:106–7).

  3. See Russell (1937:xvii).

  4. See e.g. Stalnaker (1996).

  5. See Lewis (1986:112).

  6. See McGinn (1981).

  7. This move is made by neo-Fregeans in the debate over mathematical platonism. See Hale and Wright (2001:321).

  8. Hinted in Skyrms (1976:326).

  9. This point is forcefully made by Bueno and Shalkowski (2000).

  10. Though it is of course revolting for a nominalist. The latter may well argue that mathematical practice does pose a genuine problem to be resolved through work on mathematical ontology. See Bueno and Shalkowski (2000).

  11. See Lewis (1986:74–76).

  12. See Lewis (1986:76).

  13. A notable exception is Rosenberg (1989).

  14. See Lewis (1986:71–73).

  15. See Earman (1970:267).

  16. See Strominger (1991). See also Rucker (1984) for a different approach.

  17. An alternative way of putting essentially the same idea could be this. According to modal realism, there are Newtonian worlds and there are relativistic worlds. Thus consider two possible worlds W n and W′ n containing a three-dimensional Newtonian space E 3 and a one-dimensional Newtonian time ℝ, and a possible world W r containing a relativistic spacetime like S 3 ×ℝ. We must first explain how there can be more than one Newtonian world, since this presumably will mean amending several key elements of Newtonian physics, such as the postulate of absolute simultaneity. After we are done with that, we will have to explain how all three worlds are isolated. But whatever form our theory of isolation will take, there is simply no reason to expect that isolation be physically invariant: the isolation of W n and W′ n will have to be explained differently from the isolation of W n and W r .

  18. See Bricker (2001).

  19. See Divers (2002:47–9).

  20. See Divers (2002:307).

  21. One should recall here the quandary Leibniz faced with his claim that God necessarily creates the best possible world. I discuss it at some length elsewhere.

References

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to John Divers, Dorothy Edgington, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on earlier versions of this material.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey

    Sandy Berkovski

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Berkovski, S. Lewis’ Reduction of Modality. Acta Anal 26, 95–114 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-009-0070-4

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