So I agree with what Protagoras said about the causes of the fall of LP: there wasn’t really anything like a firm refutation, though important versions of LP like Carnap’s were beleaguered by criticisms like Quine’s attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. I think the reason why LP fell was just that it went about saying all sorts of questions were meaningless questions, questions about ethics, metaphysics, etc. And people just got sick of that. The questions persisted, and our desire to ask them and talk about them didn’t die out for the claim that all our attempts to do so were mere poetry. The nails in the coffin were really just a series of influential and brilliant philosophers in the 70′s, like John Rawls and David Lewis who simply ignored the LP view about meaningfulness, and wrote books about ethics and metaphysics that people were interested enough in to discuss, argue with, or build off of.
If I’m right, this bodes ill for a revival: whether or not LPists are right about meaningfulness, people just find the LPist’s world too impoverished to live in.
I think it’s very likely that this is indeed what happened.
David Lewis who simply ignored the LP view about meaningfulness, and wrote books about [...] metaphysics
As far as I know, though, Lewis is revered for his contributions to logic and linguistics, but the rest isn’t taken very seriously. What the hell is modal realism even supposed to mean? It may be, though, I’m in the wrong circles and there are some that do.
What the hell is modal realism even supposed to mean?
The claim that MWI is true and all those possible worlds really exist is pretty much modal realism, insofar as it’s the claim that all possible worlds are as real as this one.
The claim that MWI is true and all those possible worlds really exist is pretty much modal realism, insofar as it’s the claim that all possible worlds are as real as this one.
Please let’s not be confusing MWI with Tegmark IV here.
Modal realism talks about all logically possible worlds and so it’s much closer to Tegmark’s Ultimate Ensemble.
So I agree with what Protagoras said about the causes of the fall of LP: there wasn’t really anything like a firm refutation, though important versions of LP like Carnap’s were beleaguered by criticisms like Quine’s attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. I think the reason why LP fell was just that it went about saying all sorts of questions were meaningless questions, questions about ethics, metaphysics, etc. And people just got sick of that. The questions persisted, and our desire to ask them and talk about them didn’t die out for the claim that all our attempts to do so were mere poetry. The nails in the coffin were really just a series of influential and brilliant philosophers in the 70′s, like John Rawls and David Lewis who simply ignored the LP view about meaningfulness, and wrote books about ethics and metaphysics that people were interested enough in to discuss, argue with, or build off of.
If I’m right, this bodes ill for a revival: whether or not LPists are right about meaningfulness, people just find the LPist’s world too impoverished to live in.
I think it’s very likely that this is indeed what happened.
As far as I know, though, Lewis is revered for his contributions to logic and linguistics, but the rest isn’t taken very seriously. What the hell is modal realism even supposed to mean? It may be, though, I’m in the wrong circles and there are some that do.
The claim that MWI is true and all those possible worlds really exist is pretty much modal realism, insofar as it’s the claim that all possible worlds are as real as this one.
MWI doesn’t give worlds with different fundamental physical laws.
Please let’s not be confusing MWI with Tegmark IV here.
Modal realism talks about all logically possible worlds and so it’s much closer to Tegmark’s Ultimate Ensemble.
This appears to be a similar confusion over the word “possible” to the one that lets some people think p-zombies are an idea worth considering.
Well, one of the possible (and by Lewis’ lights, actual) worlds is the world in which MWI is false.