Lewisian Themes: The Philosophy of David K. LewisFrank Jackson, Graham Priest Clarendon Press, 2004 - 285 pages David Lewis's untimely death on 14 October 2001 deprived the philosophical community of one of the outstanding philosophers of the 20th century. As many obituaries remarked, Lewis has an undeniable place in the history of analytical philosophy. His work defines much of the current agenda in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and the philosophy of mind and language. This volume, an expanded edition of a special issue of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, covers many of the topics for which Lewis was well known, including possible worlds, counterpart theory, vagueness, knowledge, probability, essence, fiction, laws, conditionals, desire and belief, and truth. Many of the papers are by very established philosophers; others are by younger scholars including many he taught. The volume also includes Lewis's Jack Smart Lecture at the Australian National University, "How Many Lives has Schrödinger's Cat?," published here for the first time. Lewisian Themes will be an invaluable resource for anyone studying Lewis's work, and a major contribution to the many topics that he mastered. |
Contents
Counting the Holes | 24 |
Dont Forget About the Correspondence Theory of Truth | 43 |
Infinitesimal Chances and the Laws of Nature | 68 |
Two Mistakes About Credence and Chance | 94 |
Lewis on Truth in Fiction | 113 |
Elusive Knowledge of Things in Themselves | 130 |
David Lewis and Schrödingers Cat | 156 |
Distributional Properties | 173 |
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Common terms and phrases
accidentally actual world agent analysis antecedent anti-Humean argue argument beliefs branches Cambridge Cargle cats purr causal chance rule claim collapse colour constraint counterfactual counterpart relation counterpart theory counterpossibles credence Dancer's Image David Lewis decision theory degree-1 instance descriptivism Desire-as-Belief determinate distinct distributional properties entails epistemic essentially Everettians exist expectations fact fiction flaming orb functions from worlds holes holism hypothesis impossible worlds indeterminate indexed instantiation intensity rule interpretation intrinsic properties intuitions Journal of Philosophy language laws Lewis's metaphysics Modal Logic modal properties modal realism necessitarian no-collapse nomic notion outcomes Oxford parthood relation Philosophical point property possible worlds predicate Principal Principle probability function problem proposition quantum mechanics rational realism with overlap reason reductionist representation role Schrödinger's Schrödinger's Cat semantic sentence similarity somebody's favourite property spacetime spatiotemporal story superposition Supervenience Suppose temporal things true truth University Press w₁ w₂ Wigner's friend