What Is Modal Realism - Essay Example

Table Of Contents 0 What is Modal Realism 2.0 What is Epistemology 3.0 Interrelation Between Modal Realism and Epistemology 2 4.0 Actualism by Alvin Plantinga 4 5.0 Conflict Area with Plantinga: Realism vs. Actualism 7 6.0 Various debates on possible worlds 9 7.0 Inference 14 8.0 Conclusion and Summary 15 1.0 What is Modal Realism David Lewis advocated that the existence of imaginary or possible worlds is as much real or believable as the actual physical world that we live in. Thus, possible worlds exist side by side to real world or actual world. The idea of a possible world cannot be boiled down to an essential idea, because it exists by an expounded and expanded idea or belief. In contrast, both the world is contextual, which may be called "indexical". It means that the meaning is understood variously by placing it in various contexts and thus it becomes dialogical and hard to locate. But cognition of meaning is possible when placed in proper context of utterance with its associated complexities. 2.0 What is Epistemology Epistemology is popularly held to be a conjunction of two fundamental words: "episteme", which means knowledge or information and "logos" means belief or a system of meanings. Thus it is a field of enquiry into the relevance and ingredients of knowledge and how do they affect us by their state and nature of existence. Hence, knowledge is seen as an after product of something. It is not a neutral state of being that was just there from the beginning. And when speaking of beginning, it also has a theological side to it, because it then analyzes the Christian belief of Origin too and how knowledge came into being. Therefore epistemology defines, analyzes, classifies and determines the very existence of knowledge. It is a very vast field but it is interminably connected with ideas and quests of metaphysics that questions the nature of our immediate outside or reality, and our inside or being. Thus if theory of knowledge questions the understanding of a mass of gathered data, then metaphysics interprets that to understand the world we inhabit. Ontology situates the various categories into different areas of interpretation and locates it within the fixity of a single perceivable and understandable reality. But what if the reality is a plural idea Then what happens to the idea of the being Where do we locate the consciousness 3.0 Interrelation Between Modal Realism and Epistemology Counterfactuals come in between the assumptions of Modal Realism and critical problems of it concerning epistemology to whose scope it may. Thus counterfactualism opens up more possibilities and act against the teleological determinism that seem to haunt historical truths that seem to be chronologically and determinedly progressing towards an ultimate end and has a hidden purpose towards ultimate perfection or destruction. In theology that maybe an apocalypse or Judgement Day, while in science it may be the end of evolution and extinction and in physics it may be the end or the beginning of another universe altogether. Hence, how does the study of knowledge that asserts the value of knowledge treat Thus knowledge and truth are interrelated. Hence, Modal Realism becomes a claim that must either be a part of that truth, which is either established by reason or by empiricism and hence is a priori or posteriori in their essence and existence. Lewis makes a claim which allows us to at least think of many possible worlds where all things are parallely possible without any temper spatial relation to each other and thus if in one world President Kenny is assassinated, then in another he may have somehow been luckier and had a chance to be the president of America for another term. But how can the validity of such a bizarre notion (at least bizarre to the seeming establishment of epistemological understanding of know-how truth, belief and system of verified reality Thus the question of 'what if' is problematic not just within its essential dimension of being impossible (since a priori knowledge is another area of deconstruction itself). One has to understand why and how it may or may not be impossible epistemologically. The epistemological knowledge of something that is real and something that is unreal is important here because it imposes a causal constraint on such suppositions, where possibilities of something abstract cannot be relegated to the a priori realm. The beginning of possibility cannot be the only basis for the existence of abstract knowledge whose existence can only remain a matter of surmise within a logical space. Knowledge on something requires a contact with the subject matter by condition of being held within the realm of knowledge. Hence, there may be a thin line between what is true and what is probably true. It can surpass the narrow limitations of belief and even the cornerstone of justification. Because as one can understand now that justification is a discursive practice that can create an illusion of reality which one can never unravel ever. Thus, justification too is quite oppressive in its state of mere existence. Thus to understand possible world one will have to argue for it from an a priori transcendental method of prepositional search for knowledge. Empirical knowledge is a condition that will only come when we can break through the unilateral dimension of a priori knowledge that we believe in. Inferential Knowledge is thus a basis for such claims by Lewis. Ultimately it is about a speculation and how much of belief can it draw in its side by its theory and how many people start believing it. 4.0 Actualism by Alvin Plantinga Alvin Plantinga saw possible worlds as approximate assumptions and representations of concrete worlds and thus by virtue of their existence is relegated to apposition of being secondary and abstract. They are just the reflection of possibilities, which are suppositions merely where existence cannot amount to actuality. Thus for Plantinga existence and actuality are one and the same in their property or sameness since the rise of one will give rise to the other. So if something is 'actual' is something that exists by virtue of being 'actual' and 'what is'. Hence concrete individuals, who exist, exist in the 'Transworld', which is 'actual' i.e. all possible worlds are same and similar and not diverse and reducible to one actual world and thus are non-indexical and cannot be elaborated beyond this absence of concrete existence. "Actualism and Possible Worlds" (1976) relays Plantinga's theory of the metaphysics of modality in an actualist mode. Actualism is defined as the state where there cannot be any nonexistent objects. T may be some world W. If U contains an individual that doesn't exist in W, then it may be possible that in the domain of both actual and possible (possible world of Lewis) which contains all individuals, it also gives arise to another possibility that there may not be all individual or at least one individual in at least one world. Alvin Plantinga (1973)1 explains the nature of Transworld identity with the example of Socrates who he supposes to exist in W, which may be some or any world, that we can imagine of. Now if W is a world where he may not have fought the Marathon, then W, may also go on to implicitly give the conclusion that he may not be the person who he's in this world since he did not amount to the same thing or end up doing having another set of characteristics in W. Hence, W presents a number of things that he did not amount to in this world, like he could not have become an influential person in W, having had become a debaucher in his youth, Plantinga says. He may also have properties he lacked in this world. Then with so many possibilities and no defined destination to a person's character or destiny he/she is identified Thus if Lewis talks about Kangaroos without tails then chances are that with so many possible varieties of kangaroos it may end up possessing characteristics of a dinosaur to us and ultimately confuse our posteriori and a priori knowledge and end up being an epistemological challenge to our reality itself and jeopardize the sanity of our own established world, being a genre of unclassified and unbounded possibilities, things may just cease to be defined things anymore and everything would become everything else that is not in the other world. Hence we will have to define and set up epistemological bases for each of these possible worlds which does to exist for us but may exist outside us but we have no idea of the kinds of possibilities we are looking for, or is actually out there! Now coming back to Plantinga's Socrates, the problem would be identification without a concrete classification of character and events associated with Socrates. Locating Socrates in W by using the knowledge of him that one possesses of him in this actual world would be a bad way to begin the search, i.e. with a pre-defined notion of the "idea" of Socrates one will not be able to find Socrates in W. Epistemology thus cannot support our definition and idea of possible worlds because we wouldn't know where to begin defining things. Plantinga says that in another world he be similar to Xenophon or Thrasymachus. For that matter he can also be Plato, if possibility would have it! Our failure to identify him in W will only fail in the entire enterprise of possibility of Socrates' existence in W. Thus Transworld identity is the identity that helps us enable identify Socrates in every world, be it W or anywhere, where there is a fixed identity that he exhibits for us to identify him from "world to worldthe criterion must include some property that Socrates has in each world in which he exists"2 Also all these inclusive properties according to Plantinga must be "empirically manifest" from physical to sociological, biographical to biological similarity that will remain constant everywhere. Failing to account for such broad features that shall remain constant and concretely proven will render the whole idea of Transworld as false. 5.0 Conflict Area with Plantinga: Realism vs. Actualism Plantinga saw possible worlds as abstract contrary to Lewis' claim. Thus if for Lewis existence does not always have to follow actuality or actual things, or rather there are things that are not actual. For Plantinga existence cannot avoid the demand of being 'actual'. Hence existence has to be 'actual' and not be beyond non-actual things because actual in not an indexical feature like Lewis for whom individuals can only exist in one world. Bryan Skyrms3 explains that such an epistemological belief in possible worlds is only possible amongst "metaphysically-minded modal logicians". The challenge remains in analyzing quantum mechanics to a greater degree such as DeWitt and Graham, who according to Skyrms drew a probable and closest interpretation of the multiverse in "The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" where they talk about the continuous existence of the state vector that sustains a reality which is actually an outcome of a unsuspecting yet existing many real worlds due to the "continual splitting of the universe". This metaphysical spillover is without any direct experience for any. But is there are necessity of such epistemological debates This can be itself answered with a contingency, where one can question the true validity that one can confer to the whole issue of being "actual". How can we assert that this is a wholesome actual world and we are in a reality, which is the real thing What indeed is real then Epistemology thus roots all possibility into affixed direction and then guides us through that path of revelation. Thus when Lewis asserts that the possible worlds do not have any space for remaining overlapped or are isolated, the main question that arises is that how can epistemology prove the validity of knowledge that has no proof Accounting for the probability of modal realism thus stands in the way of a full realization by us, since realizing another reality of another world leads to problematic questions about the subjectivity and how and where should this branching lead us Lewis maintains that plurality of possible worlds are ontologically individual and disregards the possibility of an isolated universe altogether and hence his idea of a possible world is a maximally spatiotemporally interrelated into a Mereological sum of things, then rules out the possibility of nothingness. Now taking modal intuition into account, possibility and the intuition to draw limitless possibilities is itself problematic, since the definition of what can be defined by us is again limited. 6.0 Various debates on possible worlds The epistemological objection to Lewisian realism raised by Tom Richards4 begins with the claim that if his understanding of a multiple reality is possibly true then the whole issue of intuitive modal knowledge springs from an unknown source of soothing that is unknown to us. How can one possess the knowledge of something beyond the actual world especially when modality that springs from the epistemological interpretation of modality itself that cannot account for a Lewisian theory of a plural realism Richards interjected that at any point of time there are no concrete evidence and one cannot determine whether the criterion is being met or not due to lack of any sort of interaction by us at any level except for in the imaginary. Thus in the absence of an a priori knowledge that can account for the properties of an abstract object, and whose concrete idea would necessarily have to generate from a posteriori source, or empirical evidence, that itself is an ontological challenge which goes beyond our sense experience. Existence and its definition are being challenged here. Can something exist for us, which we cannot account for May be. But it is beyond the scope of epistemological framework. Concrete things beyond our scope of experience are thus the epistemological challenge, which cannot support a nocausal relationship with a nonfactual being. Thus Lewis challenges the scope of knowledge that can or cannot exist beyond the a priori and posteriori demarcations of them, which can stand as truth in our eyes and make us add justification to their very presence. Lewis believes or rather propounds that concrete realities exist parallel to ours to which we cannot ever spatio temporarily intersect and prove as knowledge but just account for through the justification of possibilities beyond oppressive scope that is allowed to the concept of possibility itself. All knowledge may not arise or end in necessity but have a scope beyond their seemingly deterministic end. But is not Lewis' idea of possible world deterministic too, and at the onus of being beyond the scope of tangible or perceived concrete proofs. So why should we rather accept that version of truth instead of something that can actually give us solace with form and dimension - at least an appearance of truth or vraisemblance Lewis has an answer to this too: "causal acquaintance is required for some sorts of knowledge however, causal acquaintance is not demarcated by its concrete subject matter. It is demarcated by its contingency."5 Metaphysics and epistemology has a strong interconnection. Epistemology accounts for its knowledge and the truth in it through a theory of origin that metaphysical discourse supports. An epistemological account of origin and purpose and ending can make something possible but not without its attendant concrete causality which must separate the "I" from the object or external event. Can one thus question whether epistemological truths hold no mystery what so ever What about the speculations of metaphysical theology Is there a causal interpretation of God Can it be concretely proven But it is a good part of Kierkegaard's theory of existence and essence that arises from our awareness of our subjective existence and the doubt about God is itself a part of belief. Then why not the doubt about possible realities integrated into epistemological truth Thus to doubt Lewis' claim one has to begin to see it from an epistemological pint of view of possibility itself. His claim to truth thus is deconstructive to an epistemological base. Lewis thus claims that concrete objects exist utterly in a state of unrestricted matter of necessity, which should be a truth, based on the nature of its possibility extending out of all the possibilities that epistemological truths account for and this should be a justified extension of such claims. Lewisian realism is unobtainable by every standard held by him as well as epistemological truths. Lewis accounts for a world that has an unrestricted domain of concreta. And this stays put because it is beyond the scope of knowledge to account for something, which has no causal bearings onus and thus may exist without any attendant burden of justification. Hence there cannot be any restriction for its existence and further by virtue of being beyond the scope of a rightful path to knowledge, it has no moorings on basic assumptions on things that make knowledge be knowledge in the first place. Thus epistemologically knowledge has a basic assumption that in a Lewisian world cannot give rise to possible realities. Hence, epistemologically there is no access to Lewisian world and there are no other basis for entering that new element of knowledge and understanding of possible world directly from a fresh perspective which is not rooted to our acquired understanding of the reality in terms of things that all fall into the category of epistemology. This lack of isolated access to Lewisian worlds for the analysis of possibility must come from the destruction of a presupposed truth that must be accounted for every theory that one can think of. Lewis challenges that presupposed truth in epistemology. Possible worlds will always have its backbone within those possibilities based on modal beliefs. If by analysis of our actual world we account the same for another then that might be false, since such tans world problems several indexical identities cannot have a reductive solution to it also. Quantifier restriction and Lewis' broader metaphysical views springs from the idea of multiple indexical necessity that are of many different Logical possibilities, and beyond what in the actual world may be called coherent and true to what it can presuppose. Possibility cannot stay imprisoned within the realms of proven and studied prevailing physical laws of any era, then Copernicus shouldn't have made further analysis of the space beyond the epistemological scope of his time! Hence whenever a possibility of something is treated as utterly mysterious or impossible it is done so in a causal relation to a world where the actuality in experience and epistemological consciousness does not allow for this possibility to make sense or even be considered as true beyond their immediate surrounding of reality. But then certain possibilities have a suppressed quantifier restriction within it that raises important question about physical laws that Lewis must defy within the actual space-time continuum and where a talking head of a donkey is impossible keeping in biological elements that prevent it from being so, and if in another possible world it is possible than that would not be a donkey at all, epistemologically speaking. The acceptance of physical laws where pigs can fly will have to come about with an overall change in evolutionary and other laws that move the universe and thus epistemology will have to account for a lot of presumptions that not only can have massive consequences, but also become successful removing us from the parsimonious ontology of our reality. A reality where a world can exist, even in defiance to all laws of physics, which involves the properties and existence of our immediate universe beyond the earth. But can all worlds logical from out point of view No. Since, in all the cases that we cancel the possibility of the existence of another world in another universe, we take the epistemological base of our understanding of our immediate causal world. Can physical laws too be different in other physical world and if that is so, how can modal reality claim that these world have similar possible inhabitants that diverge inform similar history at any and every break possible making it multiplied and vast conjecture itself. But even such a world is open to some form or the other kindof physical law and that maybe extremely different but in tune with the workings of that world. Epistemology, on the other hand treats physical laws as basic within the actual world, which cannot be a proven concrete truth for the possible worlds that arises out of a Humean supervenience logic or deduction. Possible worlds substantively only successfully creates a conflicting mystery out of modal reality. Stephen Yablo says "Some worlds contain others as proper parts" (Yablo 1999, p. 483)6 when explaining his theory of "inclusionism" in respect to David Lewis' theory of modal realism. Thus as per him every mereological fusion of worlds can be a world in itself since it contains is a world which contains absolutely anything but properly. If his inclusionism accepts everything as a world that has a mereological unity, then the idea of something intrinsic must be analyzed too closely for benefit. Thus if something is extrinsic, then as per Yablo, it "can be changed by adding a part to its containing world". (Yablo 1999, p. 482) 7.0 Inference A reason that allows one to have knowledge about possible worlds that are as actual as ours, must revise some of its own tenets. But what utility can a reason serve us that's exclusionary of every possibility that can arise out of modal intuitive ness and must become an essential part of out knowledge Its utility may be in its appeal itself and imaginary possibilities it holds for us, or the downright metaphysical nihilism it holds for our immediate subjectivity that may not be unique anymore. It may be just a part of a multiple uniqueness that are never aware of each other but have the same origin and time of existence but follow multiple courses. This has devastating metaphysical consequences if taken seriously, because then it excludes many a possibility of the question of consciousness and the unconscious that we are a part of. Lewisian realism is sufficiently proven within its own world of possibilities and its own hypothetical lights that are successful as a good sounding plot but can it sustain epistemological completeness about our reality According to Lewisian realism the accountability of how so is almost erased and the entire possibility rests on the very virtue of being discussed forward and this possibility itself brings it into existence! The assumption thereby struggles for being adopted into the theory and this itself makes the theory successful, since there lays its true value of truth, since it is fundamentally and ontologically a deviation from epistemological explanation of all the knowledge that we possess and account for. Does Lewisian realism fail to give us a true idea of modal knowledge because it stands in complete opposition to all current theory that helps to stand in the way of his justification for something that allows no intervention into the epistemological web of our current knowledge With the problems of spatio-temporally isolation of the universes it also becomes problematic to think or deduce pure sets, numbers or other things that go beyond space-time interrelation. But to Lewis the problem can be tackled by thinking of these spatiotemporally unrelated worlds as "analogically spatiotemporally related"7 that stand just by relation to some natural relation to their world mates. (Lewis 1986, pp. 71-76) 8.0 Conclusion and Summary Lewis' modal realism is absolute and part of logical modalities best-explained theory. While the problem of Transworld identity mere seems to be an illusion when one tries to concretize it in terms of thinking with the aid of an image. This is also supported by Peter van Inwagen (1985, p. 112), who says that the mind is drawn according to an epistemological convention that finds the exists-in relation between these possibilities by supplementing or placing one symbol or idea into the framework of another idea or symbol that we actually cannot account for (since it is not possible to think of it outside our epistemological knowledge. Infact this kind of symbol confusion leads to actual replacement of possible worlds into our own and what amounts is the ultimate image of something completely physical in nature and which ultimately comes to represent everything actual. Thus exists-in becomes synonymous to what we may understand as 'located within'.8 Thus Plantings gives an epistemic defence of the impossibility of possible states of many worlds and their random redundancy that is not only epistemologically out of our reach, but also quite unjustified theologically, since God made possible the existence of something that is the best output of all designed approximate possibilities. If Lewis loses epistemological support, Alvin Plantinga wins it by making human properties a possibility in all Transworld outcome since branching into random possibility is not only physically impossible, when we are talking about the numerous identity possibilities of things within the actual world, beyond their conceivable existence, when we cannot define existence outside what we already epistemologically know or experience it as. Knowing is thus limited and within actual world what is physical is already something that has a destined existence at least when understood from a historical point of view, if not foretold. Epistemic defense of Plantinga also extends to the realm of morality, since the inclusion of impossibility and consideration of it also involves a sense of censorship of thoughts and ideas, from a philosophical point of view at least. Known is seen as good while unknown is seen as evil in his realm of theory, since knowledge is related to god's Word. But then the possibility of many universes defying physical laws that are working quite well in this one seem quite ersatz when considered alongside to Lewis' possible worlds and their inherent defiance even to common empirical and positivist epistemological knowledge, that taking them into account would involve a revision even of such theories of the birth of our world, least to say of this universe itself and plunge physics into another modality of mystery and nothing else. Works Cited 1. Lewis, David. "On the Plurality of Worlds". Blackwell, Oxford, 1986. p111 2. Lewis, D. (1968). Counterpart theory and quantifiedmodal logic. In Philosophical Papers, Volume 1, pp. 26-39. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3. Plantinga, A. "Transworld Identity Or Worldbound Individuals." In Logic and Ontology, ed. M. Munitz. 193-212. New York: New York University Press, 1973. Reprinted in Plantinga (2003). 4. Plantinga, Alvin. Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality ed. Matthew Davidson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). pp76. 5. Richards. Tom. "The worlds of David Lewis". Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 53:105-118,1975. 6. Skyrms, Brian. "Possible Worlds, Physics and Metaphysics", Philosophical Studies 30 (1976) 323-332. All Rights Reserved. Copyright. 9 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland 7. Van Inwagen, P. "Plantinga on Transworld Identity." in Alvin Plantinga, eds. J. Tomberlin, and P. van Inwagen. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985. Reprinted in van Inwagen 2001. 8. Yablo, S. (1999). Intrinsicness. Philosophical Topics 26, 479-505. Read More