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Impossible Worlds: A Modest Approach
Open accessAbstract
Reasoning about situations we take to be impossible is useful for a variety of theoretical purposes. Furthermore, using a device of impossible worlds when reasoning about the impossible is useful in the same sorts of ways that the device of possible worlds is useful when reasoning about the possible. This paper discusses some of the uses of impossible worlds and argues that commitment to them can and should be had without great metaphysical or logical cost. The paper then provides an account of reasoning with impossible worlds, by treating such reasoning as reasoning employing counterpossible conditionals, and provides a semantics for the proposed treatment.
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Citations
Cited by
Schaffer, J. (2009) · Metametaphysics · doi:10.1093/oso/9780199546046.003.0012 · Cited by 1,382
Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction
Rosen, G. (2010) · Modality · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199565818.003.0007 · Cited by 1,285
Modality and Explanatory Reasoning
Kment, B. (2014) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604685.001.0001 · Cited by 395
Brogaard, B., & Salerno, J. (2013) · Synthese · doi:10.1007/s11229-012-0196-6 · Cited by 288
Wilson, A. (2018) · Noûs · doi:10.1111/nous.12190 · Cited by 267
Metadata
- Authors
- Nolan, D.
- Venue
- Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic
- Publisher
- Duke University Press
- Published
- 1997-10-01
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 535-572
- ISSN
- 0029-4527 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2061470644
- Cited by
- 576
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 0.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
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- Nolan, D. (1997). Impossible Worlds: A Modest Approach. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic. https://doi.org/10.1305/ndjfl/1039540769
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
