tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post114554040886461980..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: What Mightn't Have BeenRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1146406699877247462006-04-30T10:18:00.000-04:002006-04-30T10:18:00.000-04:00Update: I think when I wrote of 'external' facts, ...<B>Update:</B> I think when I wrote of 'external' facts, I really meant 'negative' facts. (Though I suppose a negative claim is a form of external claim, to the effect that various external things don't exist.)Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1145625497587834772006-04-21T09:18:00.000-04:002006-04-21T09:18:00.000-04:00Thanks, I understand better what you're after here...Thanks, I understand better what you're after here.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14851240963321295307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1145584985321758702006-04-20T22:03:00.000-04:002006-04-20T22:03:00.000-04:00Hi Steve - thanks for the feedback (all this modal...Hi Steve - thanks for the feedback (all this modality stuff is potentially relevant to my honours thesis, so any questions, criticisms, or calls for clarification are very welcome).<BR/><BR/>I need to be careful with the deflation here. I don't want to say that actualization just is a worldly fact, or purely internal to a world. (That would seem to lead us to narrow fatalism still, since world-indexed facts hold necessarily within the static modal-multiverse.) But the idea is that it can "piggy-back" on the realization of the worldly facts, for - as I put it - "A world's actuality merely consists in its claims all being true."<BR/><BR/>Now, I agree with you that this is still a "big deal". The account isn't meant to be deflationary in any derogatory sense. It's more about recognizing that actualization isn't a totally independent, free-floating fact. It's one and the same fact as whether all the world's claims are true. (This is still a very significant fact, though!)<BR/><BR/>In this sense, each possible world implicitly represents itself as being actual, for they represent their claims as being true. But these can be false representations. So there's nothing about the representations (possible worlds) themselves which suffices to fix the meta-modal facts of actuality. (That's good news, I think.) Instead, we need to look to reality itself, and see which "way" (world) it is.<BR/><BR/>The curious thing about my picture here - and which might in some sense be better described as 'inflationary' - is that there are facts which don't fit anywhere within the picture of the static modal multiverse: namely, the fact of which world is actualized. So it would be nice to get a firmer grasp on what sort of fact this is. I hope the identification with 'what is true' (or 'which worldly facts obtain') might be a first step here, albeit a fairly trivial one.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1145565548317403192006-04-20T16:39:00.000-04:002006-04-20T16:39:00.000-04:00Lots of ideas in here to think about. I'd like to...Lots of ideas in here to think about. I'd like to just ask you about the idea that actualization can be deflated from a meta-modal fact down to a worldly fact. If a world included the meta-modal property that it is actual somehow within it, that's a property 'like no other' which would seem still to make that world unique in a special way which goes outside the framework. You say "a world's actuality merely consists in its claims all being true": getting assigned that truth value is a big deal - can you really deflate this to the same level as there being a possible world which just happens to be the only one containing purple cows? <BR/> By the way these posts grapplings with modality are great -thanks,<BR/><BR/>Steve EsserStevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14851240963321295307noreply@blogger.com