tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post2411821957860657821..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Reifying PossibiliaRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-13226013180927369702009-01-23T01:22:00.000-05:002009-01-23T01:22:00.000-05:00Timmo - Bert exists well enough -- it's just that ...Timmo - Bert exists well enough -- it's just that his temporal location is in the past. Note that if there were no such entity as Bert, then it would be metaphysically incoherent to claim "John wrongs Bert." ("Wrongs <I>who</I>?") There clearly <B>is</B> someone we're talking about here -- an actual person. Whether he's around now is of no more metaphysical significance than whether he's around here.<BR/><BR/>Brandon - I think possible worlds are <A HREF="http://www.philosophyetc.net/2008/02/ultimate-question-kripke-or-lewis.html" REL="nofollow">purely qualitative</A>, so description captures all there is to capture.<BR/><BR/>Jack - mere possibilia definitely seem worse to me than other abstracta. It's harder to pin down why. Perhaps part of it is that mere possibilia misrepresent their own natures in a way that other abstracta don't. Frodo is essentially warm-blooded, say. But then Frodo can't be an abstract object, because abstract objects don't have blood at all.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-84940075787061997862009-01-22T19:42:00.000-05:002009-01-22T19:42:00.000-05:00Richard,Why can we not have obligations to individ...Richard,<BR/><BR/>Why can we not have obligations to individuals who do not exist?<BR/><BR/>For example, suppose that John and Bert are soldiers. They are friends; one day, Bert is shot and begins to die. While Bert is dying, John promises Bert, as Bert requests, to deliver his watch to his wife when he (John) returns home. Subsequently, Bert dies. Now, when John returns home after the war, he decides to pawn off the watch -- breaking his promise <I>to Bert</I>. Intuitively, it seems as though John <I>wrongs Bert</I>. It doesn't make a difference that Bert is dead.Timmohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04095596090336782085noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-50269587169831702222009-01-14T22:04:00.000-05:002009-01-14T22:04:00.000-05:00Hi, Richard,I'm not sure what would be involved in...Hi, Richard,<BR/><BR/>I'm not sure what would be involved in picking out (say) Richard-worlds if you couldn't in principle pick out possible Richards as pertaining to those worlds; Richard-worlds are just possible worlds where Richard can in principle be picked out as belonging to the possible world. (And to be real Richard-worlds they'd have to be; they couldn't, for instance, just be worlds that could be described as having a Richard in them, because descriptions can be false and therefore they might not be Richard-worlds at all, and ditto with related ways of trying not to use possible Richards as the criteria for picking out possible Richard-worlds. If we can't pick out Richard, we can't ever be sure we have the right worlds to have actually picked out the Richard-worlds, except by stipulation.) And so with 'Kim'-worlds, although in such a case we are dealing with a more complex practical task because of the difficulty of getting precise enough to distinguish 'Kim' from other possible children; but given the stipulation that we've overcome that practical problem, we have all we need to talk about 'Kim' as a real possible (she's the element that makes a 'Kim'-world a 'Kim'-world rather than not a 'Kim'-world) -- if possible worlds analysis is taken at face value. The plausible alternative is to say that in possible worlds analysis we don't really ever pick out 'Kim'-worlds; we stipulate them as a feature of a model of real-world modalities. Then we can have 'Kim'-worlds without any 'Kim' to pick out. But if this is so, then possible worlds analysis is distorting to the extent that it (as a matter of the model rather than of reality) treats possibilia as distinct from modal features of the actual world.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-7952746442279648272009-01-14T18:05:00.000-05:002009-01-14T18:05:00.000-05:00Richard,What is the argument that fictional charac...Richard,<BR/><BR/>What is the argument that fictional characters and mere possibilia do not exist? Is there something more repugnant about the existence of fictional characters than the existence of other abstract objects, like works of fiction?Jack Spencerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01560248410206874289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-91181690641191063942009-01-14T15:05:00.000-05:002009-01-14T15:05:00.000-05:00Heh, true, silly me.Brandon - I'm not sure I follo...Heh, true, silly me.<BR/><BR/>Brandon - I'm not sure I follow you. For all I've said here we <I>may</I> be able to pick out the 'Kim'-<I>worlds</I>. But that's not the same as picking out <I>Kim</I> (de re), because "intentional objects" aren't thereby objects.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-55087767695977862192009-01-14T13:49:00.000-05:002009-01-14T13:49:00.000-05:00Frodo should have done it:http://www.howitshouldha...Frodo should have done it:<BR/><BR/>http://www.howitshouldhaveended.com/Divx%20links/LOTR.htmlCarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16384464120149476437noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-49326097905764978322009-01-14T13:07:00.000-05:002009-01-14T13:07:00.000-05:00By the by, Gollum destroyed Sauron's ring, not Fro...By the by, Gollum destroyed Sauron's ring, not Frodo.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-81737820189594846602009-01-14T10:54:00.000-05:002009-01-14T10:54:00.000-05:00It's also relevant to showing a way in which possi...It's also relevant to showing a way in which possible worlds analysis of modality distorts what it is supposed to model; because if possible worlds analysis were wholly accurate it <I>would</I> be in-principle possible to identify 'Kim'. (The difficulty would simply be one of picking out the 'Kim'-world(s) in particular from all the infinite possible worlds in order to talk accurately about 'Kim' in particular.)Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-44966971718646603862009-01-13T21:36:00.000-05:002009-01-13T21:36:00.000-05:00Oh, you're thinking of concrete possibilia. That's...Oh, you're thinking of <I>concrete</I> possibilia. That's a separate issue. I'm merely arguing against abstract possibilia here, or the thought that there are possible people that don't exist (in <I>any</I> concrete universe).<BR/><BR/>[P.S. if Kim exists elsewhere, there's <A HREF="http://www.philosophyetc.net/2008/11/morality-in-multiverse-revisited.html" REL="nofollow">nothing to lament</A>.]Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-55598095502085138042009-01-13T21:27:00.000-05:002009-01-13T21:27:00.000-05:00Anthropic fine-tuning.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...Anthropic fine-tuning.<BR/><BR/>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe<BR/><BR/>If you think that things could have been such that no observers would exist, and that most worlds, weighted for simplicity by Occam's Razor, include no observers, then your theory predicts no actual observers.Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16384464120149476437noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1148663962696129412009-01-13T21:19:00.000-05:002009-01-13T21:19:00.000-05:00How so?How so?Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-18134196167093547382009-01-13T21:17:00.000-05:002009-01-13T21:17:00.000-05:00This view puts you in a *very* bad position to exp...This view puts you in a *very* bad position to explain why our universe is such that there are observers, unless you take a very constrained view about what sorts of worlds are possible, which you don't, as far as I can tell.Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16384464120149476437noreply@blogger.com