I’d like to take this idea out for a test drive. If actuality is the ontological delimiter of possibility (ODOP), what follows?<\/p>\n
Offhand, it conflicts with the idea that possibility is ontologically prior to actuality, an idea that might seem attractive given that the actual world is generally thought to be one of a vast number of metaphysically possible worlds. On this picture, we start with a vast ensemble of possible worlds and either (a) one of these possible worlds is somehow “anointed” as the actual world, or (b) actuality is a reflexive relation between each possible world and itself.<\/p>\n
The problem with (a) is that this “anointing” would have to come from outside <\/span>the set of possible worlds, but that makes no more sense than something’s coming from nothing (Some may beg to differ, but ex nihilo nihil fit<\/span> seems to me nearly as secure as the cogito<\/span>.). By definition nothing can be<\/span> outside the set of possible worlds.<\/p>\n The problem with (b), as I see it, is its deflationary treatment of actuality. Actuality, according to (b), is nothing special, since every world has it in exactly the same sense. (As the character Dash from The Incredibles<\/span> reminded us–yes, I liked the movie–“If everyone’s ‘special’ then no one is.”) But what’s wrong with a deflationary treatment of actuality? If a philosophical all-star like David Lewis endorses it (see his “Anselm and Actuality” in Philosophical Papers<\/span>, vol. 1), it’s got to have something going for it, right? What, he asks, could possibly make the actual world so special<\/span>? That’s a good question and I’ll answer it with a question.<\/p>\n What makes possible worlds possible? Why, for instance, is our world possible whereas a world containing square-circles is not? The laws of logic, you say. Fine, I agree. But how could the laws of logic do that <\/span>if they weren’t actual<\/span> in the first place? How could non-actual laws of any sort constrain anything at all? I don’t see how. My argument contra Lewis is therefore also an argument that actuality is the ODOP. If a deflationary account of actuality is accepted, then there is no way to account for the possibility of what is possible, including the alleged real possibility of actuality’s being as the deflationist thinks. Hence, we must reject the deflationary account of actuality and recognize that actuality is ontologically prior to possibility. What makes the actual world so special<\/span>? The very fact that it is the ontological delimiter of possibility.<\/p>\n I’ll close with one more observation. If my thesis is correct, then a null world–one of absolute nothingness–is not an intelligible possibility. Its possibility would nullify its possibility. Consequently, there can be no null world. It is necessary that something exists.<\/p>\n It occurs to me just now that I’ve got to refine my view of the “actual world” to account for the difference between logical and physical possibility. I’ll do that tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’d like to take this idea out for a test drive. If actuality is the ontological delimiter of possibility (ODOP), what follows? Offhand, it conflicts with the idea that possibility is ontologically prior to actuality, an idea that might seem attractive given that the actual world is generally thought to be one of a vast\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}