A Review of the Concept of Concrete Possible Worlds and how Transcendent Wisdom Can Criticize It

Document Type : Research Paper

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Abstract

The concept of possible worlds was borne in analytic philosophy. It had an important role in overcoming the skepticism which was resulted from new empiricism and rejected modal logic. This led to a vast discussion around the nature of the concept of possible worlds. Some philosophers considered possible worlds as abstract and possible states of the affairs of this actual world. Some others, the most important of who is David Lewis, using the approach called reductive nominalism have considered all the possible worlds as concrete. According to this approach there exist other concrete worlds in addition to this actual one; so modal notions must be defined based on non modal notions.
In this paper, first we describe Lewis's theory. Then we discuss some objections to his theory. Finally, based on the theories of Islamic philosophers, we will show how modal notions can be extracted from reality and so there is no need to assume plural concrete possible worlds in order to explain modal notions.

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References

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