Ways a World Might Be: Metaphysical and Anti-Metaphysical Essays

300 Pages·2003·1.3 MB·English

by  Robert C. Stalnaker

WAYS A WORLD MIGHT BE
This page intentionally left blank
Ways a World Might Be
METAPHYSICAL AND ANTI-METAPHYSICAL ESSAYS
ROBERT C. STALNAKER
Clarendon Press · Oxford
GreatClarendonStreet,OxfordOX26DP
OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford.
ItfurtherstheUniversity'sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship,
andeducationbypublishingworldwidein
OxfordNewYork
AucklandBangkokBuenosAiresCapeTownChennai
DaresSalaamDelhiHongKongIstanbulKarachiKolkata
KualaLumpurMadridMelbourneMexicoCityMumbaiNairobi
SãoPauloShanghaiTaipeiTokyoToronto
Oxfordisaregisteredtrademark ofOxfordUniversityPress
intheUK andincertainothercountries
PublishedintheUnitedStates
byOxfordUniversityPressInc., NewYork
©RobertC.Stalnaker2003
Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted
DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker)
Firstpublished2003
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,
storedinaretrievalsystem,or transmitted,inanyform orbyanymeans,
withoutthepriorpermissioninwriting ofOxfordUniversityPress,
oras expresslypermittedbylaw, or under termsagreedwiththeappropriate
reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction
outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment.
OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove
Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover
andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
Dataavailable
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Dataavailable
ISBN0-19-9251487 (hbk.)
ISBN0-19-9251495 (pbk.)
13579108642
TypesetbyKolamInformationServicesPrivateLimited,Pondicherry, India.
PrintedinGreatBritain
onacid-freepaperby
BiddlesLtd.,Guildford&King'sLynn
In memory of
Louis O. Mink
Carl G. Hempel
H. Paul Grice
David K. Lewis
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
Allbuttwoofthepapers included inthiscollectionhavebeenpreviouslypublished. Ithanktheeditors andpublishers
for permissionto reprint them. Details of thesources are given on page xii. In most cases, the papers have been only
lightly edited, but Chapter 3—a dialogue on impossible worlds—has been expanded in response to comments by
DavidLewis, andpostscriptshavebeenadded toChapters5 and8onsometechnicalissuesdiscussedinthose papers.
Thanks to Andy Egan for invaluable editorial assistance in preparing the papers and updating the references, and for
adviceonmatters ofbothsubstanceand detail.Thanks toPeterMomtchiloffofOxford UniversityPress forhis good
advice about the selection of papers, among many other things, and for his support.
I can't thank by name all of the many teachers, colleagues, and students who have helped me to get clearer about the
issues discussed in these papers, so let me thank them collectively, and mention just a few who stand out.
Saul Kripke must take some of the blame for the preoccupation with possibilities that is evident in the papers in this
collection, since I was first brought to appreciate the clarifying power of the framework of possible worlds in his
seminar at Princeton in 1964–5 (where ideas about Wittgenstein on following a rule mingled with the ideas that were
latertotakeforminNamingandNecessity).TheinfluenceofhisargumentsinNamingandNecessityonmyideasaboutthe
relations between modal, semantic, and epistemological concepts will be evident throughout these papers, most
explicitly in Part IV
Four of the papers were originally written for festschrifts, and I am indebted to the philosophers celebrated in those
collections – Paul Benacerraf, Ed Gettier, Ruth Marcus, and Sydney Shoemaker – all people with remarkable
philosophicalminds whohaveinfluenced mythinking onmetaphysicalmatters throughtheirwork,theirexample,and
philosophical discussion over the years.
Thepaperonsupervenience(Chapter5)grewoutofametaphysicsseminaratMITtaughtjointlywithJudyThomson,
and my thoughts about thisissue and others inmetaphysicshavebenefittedfrom her incisiveargumentsand analyses.
Ned Block's insights into questions about consciousness and concepts have helped me to see many things I hadn't
seen before. Collaboration with Ned, first on a seminar on consciousness, and then on a joint article (Block and
Stalnaker 1999),was importanttomy understanding ofissues bothaboutmetaphysicaland conceptual possibility, and
about
viii PREFACE
phenomenal consciousness. Some of the ideas in Chapters 10, 11, 12, and 13 have their source in that collaboration.
Anyone who spends his or her time thinking and writing about philosophical problems develops, along the way, a
clusterofprejudicesandpreoccupations,methodsandstylesofargumentthatconstitutes,onehopes,ageneralviewof
things. Whereitcomesfrom and howitdevelopsis hard tosay, but theexamples provided byteachers and colleagues
that we both follow and react against obviously play a crucial role in shaping our philosophical personae. The four
philosophers to whose memory this book is dedicated played a particularly important role in my own philosophical
development, boththrough thesubstance of theirideas and arguments, and by theforce of theirpersonalities. Letme
say a little about each of them.
Louis Mink was my main undergraduate teacher of philosophy at Wesleyan University. He was at the center of the
intellectuallifeoftheuniversity, andhad manystudentswhowentontodistinguishedcareersinphilosophy. Louishad
an insatiable intellectual curiosity, and showed us how to think philosophically about everything. With him I studied
Kantand StAugustine, Collingwoodand logicalpositivism, thephilosophy of history and socialscience, among other
things. He fed my ambivalenceabout metaphysics by getting me to appreciate both the richness of the philosophical
traditionandthepowerofthelogicalempiricistcritique.Louishasalwaysbeen,for me,amodelofwhataphilosopher
should be.
I first encountered thework of C. G. Hempelin high school, browsingin James R. Newman's anthology, The World of
Mathematics. His essays reprintedthere, ‘On theNature of Mathematical Truth’ and ‘Geometry and EmpiricalScience’
struck me as models of clarityand good sense, as they stilldo, and helped todraw me intophilosophy. WhenI got to
graduate school I benefitted from his livelyseminars, patient and painstaking comments on my work, his writings on
explanation, confirmation and concept formation, and most of all from his example of clarity of mind, intellectual
integrity, and generosity. I was fortunate to be his student and teaching assistant.
PaulGricewasnever myteacherordepartmentalcolleague,butIgottoknowhimwhenhemadeanextended visitto
theUniversityofIllinois, whereI was teaching, in1970, and during a memorablesummer institute at Irvine in1971. I
had earlier been able to attend just one of his William James Lectures, but I vividly remember the intellectual
excitement of the occasion, the feeling that we were watching a great philosophical mind in action. Grice was an
opportunistic and experimental thinker, eclectic in his methods and interests, following out lines of thought to see
where they led him. But a coherent philosophical vision emerged – a view about the relations between language,
thought, and action – that has greatly influenced my own way of thinking about these issues.
PREFACE ix
I began corresponding with David Lewis in 1968, when we discovered that we had developed,independently, similar
theoriesofcounterfactuals,andwehadmanyfruitfulandenjoyablediscussionsovertheyears from thattimeuntiljust
before his death in 2001. David was, of course, an unabashed metaphysician, and one might think that he was
untroubledbythekindofmixed feelings aboutthesubjectthatIhaveexpressed, buthedid say, intheintroductionto
his first collection of papers: ‘I should have liked to be a piecemeal, unsystematic philosopher, offering independent
proposals on a variety of topics. It was not to be’ (Lewis 1983a: ix). In a sense, it was to be, for even though David's
many philosophicalcontributions grewout ofhis metaphysicalsystem, and fit together withremarkablecoherence, he
was carefultoshowus whenan analysis or an argumentwas detachablebyonewhodidn'tbuy intothewholesystem.
His work was widelyapplied,bothwithin and outsideof philosophy, by researchers who wouldnothavethought that
metaphysicscould berelevanttotheir work.Theinfluence ofDavid's work,and I hopeofhisexampleas well,willbe
seen in every paper in this collection.
Those who knew these four philosophers willagree that theywere radically different from each other in personal and
intellectualstyle,buttheyareallparadigmcasesofphilosophers,andhadmuchincommon.Theyallhadapassionfor
philosophy, and a focus onphilosophicalissues. Styleand method emergedfrom grapplingwith them. Whileeach had
his own philosophical agenda, they were all adept at seeing things from other points of view, and were generous and
effectiveinshowing others howtoadvancetheirownprojects. Theyallhad a senseofhumor and a senseoffun: they
knew how to take philosophy seriously without taking themselves too seriously. They saw, and helped us to see, that
philosophy is an activity that is both enjoyable and worthwhile.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 2003