Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 A simple formal language
- 2 Predicates and functors
- 3 The isomorphism problem
- 4 Quantification
- 5 Transmundism
- 6 Putnam's ‘Meaning of “meaning”’
- 7 Lewis on languages and language
- 8 Causation and semantics
- 9 Belief–desire psychology
- 10 Direct knowledge
- References
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 A simple formal language
- 2 Predicates and functors
- 3 The isomorphism problem
- 4 Quantification
- 5 Transmundism
- 6 Putnam's ‘Meaning of “meaning”’
- 7 Lewis on languages and language
- 8 Causation and semantics
- 9 Belief–desire psychology
- 10 Direct knowledge
- References
- Index
Summary
In this chapter I want to take up some issues in the metaphysics of possible worlds. Although not strictly connected with the main theme of this book, it might help to get clear just what kind of metaphysical framework I am assuming, particularly since not all possible-worlds theorists adopt the same views. The view I shall be outlining is the one I called transmundism on page 43 and briefly outlined there. The first question I want to discuss is what Kaplan 1975 calls haecceitism and I want to see what this doctrine amounts to in a transmundist framework. Kaplan (Loux 1979, p. 217) defines haecceitism as the view that the same thing can exist in different possible worlds, and that a common ‘thisness’ may underlie extreme dissimilarity and distinct thisnesses may underlie great resemblance. Now the first feature of transmundism is that things as-such are not located in worlds. For some entities, as discussed on pages 45–8, there is to be sure a property ωactual such that a can be said to exist in world w iff w ∈ ωactual (a) But ωactual just happens to be one property among many, and it is no more metaphysically privileged, in a transmundist framework, than any other property. So the question of whether or not individuals can exist in more than one world turns out not to be a metaphysical question at all, but simply a question of whether the property ωactual, that we express by using the word ‘exists’, allows there to be w ≠ w′ such that w ∀ ωactual and w′ ∀ ωactual(a). I don't mean to claim that the question turns out to be simply a linguistic question.
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- Information
- Language in the WorldA Philosophical Enquiry, pp. 59 - 71Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994