{"title":"Taking Possible Worlds Seriously","authors":"Palle Yourgrau","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"The discussion so far has been employing the notion of possible worlds, popularized via the semantics of modal logic. How seriously, however, should possible worlds be taken? David Lewis held them to be genuine, concrete worlds, no less real than ours, the actual world, whereas Robert Stalnaker and Saul Kripke take them to be, rather, abstract entities, properties of the actual world—the only real world—which it might possibly possess. I agree with Lewis that possible worlds are no less real than the actual world, but I also agree with Stalnaker that only our world actually exists. I affirm that merely possible worlds, though they lack existence, possess being. I develop the notion of possible worlds, in which possible individuals exist, but also point to unsolved problems, such as how to account for the contingency of the actuality of the actual world.","PeriodicalId":303491,"journal":{"name":"Death and Nonexistence","volume":"37 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131328051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Predicate of Existence","authors":"Palle Yourgrau","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Kant famously declared that existence is not a (real) predicate. This famous dictum has been seen as echoed in the doctrine of the founders of modern logic, Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, that existence isn’t a first-order property possessed by individuals, but rather a second-order property expressed by the existential quantifier. Russell in 1905 combined this doctrine with his new theory of descriptions and declared the paradox of nonexistence to be resolved without resorting to his earlier distinction between existence and being. In recent years, however, logicians and philosophers like Saul Kripke, David Kaplan, and Nathan Salmon have argued that there is no defensible reason to deny that existence is a property of individuals. Kant’s dictum has also been re-evaluated, the result being that the paradox of nonexistence has not, after all, disappeared. Yet it’s not clear how exactly Kripke et al. propose to resolve the paradox.","PeriodicalId":303491,"journal":{"name":"Death and Nonexistence","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127046684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Cloud or the Raindrops?","authors":"Palle Yourgrau","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"The birth and death of a person constitute (existential) changes in that individual. This idea is challenged, however, by Thomas Aquinas—supported by Peter Geach—who believes that no change can involve the very existence of the subject of that change. It is argued, however, that Aquinas’s position is indefensible, since it involves denying that before Socrates existed, it was a fact that he didn’t exist. Another challenge, however, arises from the thesis of C. S. Peirce—supported by A. N. Prior—that before Socrates was born, there was not even the possibility of his existence, since possibility is always general, individuality arising only from existence itself. An argument is presented, however, that Peirce’s thesis cannot be accepted. More generally, attention is drawn to the importance of the commonsense notion of individuals.","PeriodicalId":303491,"journal":{"name":"Death and Nonexistence","volume":"92 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116497044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nonexistence and Death","authors":"Palle Yourgrau","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Since, as most philosophers of death agree, death implies nonexistence (the corpse is not the dead person, who is essentially a living being), it follows that the mystery of death is due in no small part to the paradox of nonexistence. Failing to recognize this, philosophers of death have failed to engage with the literature on the logic of nonexistence, and thus have failed to appreciate Russell’s 1902 distinction between existence and being in relation to the ontology of death. By contrast, it is maintained here that the dead are nonexistent objects that have forfeited their existence, but not their being. More generally, one of the principal goals of this study is to draw attention to the fact that the left hand of philosophy has ignored what the right hand is doing. The mysteries of death and nonexistence, which should have been approached together, have been kept apart.","PeriodicalId":303491,"journal":{"name":"Death and Nonexistence","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123376250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Where You Go When You’re Dead","authors":"Palle Yourgrau","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Where do you go when you’re dead, when you leave this world? The dead, like the unborn and the living, are possible persons. To be possible, arguably, means to exist in some possible world. It’s tempting, therefore, to assume that when you die, you simply “travel” to another possible world. The temptation, however, should be resisted. There is no travel between possible worlds. What happens in one possible world has no effect on what happens in another. And the same is true of coming to exist. You don’t enter this world by traveling from another one. How you get to this world depends on the type of object in question. Buildings are “born” by being built. People are born (usually) via sexual intercourse. These ordinary facts need to be understood from an ontological point of view. Just as you don’t enter this world from another, when you leave it, you don’t go to another.","PeriodicalId":303491,"journal":{"name":"Death and Nonexistence","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115560406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Paradox of Nonexistence","authors":"Palle Yourgrau","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"The paradox of nonexistence, bequeathed us by Parmenides, is introduced: how can there be something that fails to exist if there’s nothing “there” to not exist? This is a paradox since, intuitively, many things do in fact fail to exist—for example, creatures of fiction or myth, impossible objects like the round square, past objects like the dead, and so on. Bertrand Russell’s proposed solution in 1902 is explained, suggesting we distinguish existence from “being,” where being is taken to belong to everything we can think of, existent or not. This distinction, or something like it, is then seen to be echoed by a number of philosophers, historical and contemporaneous, though not always in the context of attempting to resolve the paradox of nonexistence.","PeriodicalId":303491,"journal":{"name":"Death and Nonexistence","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130643568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fellow Travelers","authors":"Palle Yourgrau","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190247478.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190247478.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"A synoptic account of the ontology of death developed in the book is offered, according to which the dead (and the unborn) are seen to be nonexistent objects that possess being but lack existence, and that retain their essential natures as living beings that are now no longer actually alive. This approach has points of contact with the approaches offered by several other philosophers, only one of whom, however, is engaged in the philosophy of death, which helps to confirm the thesis that philosophers of death have failed to take into account the insights achieved in other branches of philosophy. The approach taken by each of these “fellow travelers”—Niall Connolly, Timothy Williamson, Nathan Salmon, Kit Fine, David Kaplan, Derek Parfit—is considered, in turn, and the places where there is agreement, and also disagreement, with the views advanced in this study are delineated.","PeriodicalId":303491,"journal":{"name":"Death and Nonexistence","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117246873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Time and Existence","authors":"Palle Yourgrau","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190247478.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The nonexistence of the dead is a consequence of the fact that people are objects in time, and something’s position in time determines whether or not it exists. This is known as presentism. Objects like the dead, which belong exclusively to the past, are nonexistent. At least, this is true of time in the intuitive sense. Relativity theory, however, appears to contradict intuitive time, as was argued by Gödel. A defense is offered of Gödel’s argument, based on how Einstein himself understood special relativity, but arguments are also considered which reject the conventional understanding of relativity. Quantum mechanics also conflicts, here, with relativity. The conclusion is that there appears to be no decisive reason to reject intuitive time based on the inconclusive and divided deliverances of physical science, and thus no decisive reason to reject the view that the dead are nonexistent.","PeriodicalId":303491,"journal":{"name":"Death and Nonexistence","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126241723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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