E-Book
183,99 €

A Companion to David Lewis E-Book

0,0

183,99 €

Sammeln Sie Punkte in unserem Gutscheinprogramm und kaufen Sie E-Books und Hörbücher mit bis zu 100% Rabatt.

Mehr erfahren.

Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
Serie: Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
Sprache: Englisch

Beschreibung

In A Companion to David Lewis, Barry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer bring together top philosophers to explain, discuss, and critically extend Lewis's seminal work in original ways. Students and scholars will discover the underlying themes and complex interconnections woven through the diverse range of his work in metaphysics, philosophy of language, logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, ethics, and aesthetics.

The first and only comprehensive study of the work of David Lewis, one of the most systematic and influential philosophers of the latter half of the 20th century
Contributions shed light on the underlying themes and complex interconnections woven through Lewis's work across his enormous range of influence, including metaphysics, language, logic, epistemology, science, mind, ethics, and aesthetics
Outstanding Lewis scholars and leading philosophers working in the fields Lewis influenced explain, discuss, and critically extend Lewis's work in original ways
An essential resource for students and researchers across analytic philosophy that covers the major themes of Lewis's work

Details

Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:

Android

iOS

von Legimi
zertifizierten E-Readern

Seitenzahl: 1739

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Bewertungen

0,0

Rezensionen(0 Rezensionen)

Ähnliche

BESTSELLER

Desire – Die Zeit der Rache ist gekommen

Lisa Jackson

BESTSELLER

Wolkenschloss (Ungekürzte Lesung)

Kerstin Gier

BESTSELLER

The Deadly Side of Love

Francis Eden

BESTSELLER

A Dark and Secret Magic (Ungekürzte Lesung)

Wallis Kinney

BESTSELLER

Not Quite Dead Yet (Ungekürzt)

Holly Jackson

BESTSELLER

Versprich mir, dass du tanzt (Ungekürzte Lesung)

Dani Atkins

BESTSELLER

Die Verlorene (Autorisierte Lesefassung)

Miriam Georg

BESTSELLER

Lost Girls - Breathing for the First Time - Lost-Girls-Dilogie, Band 1 (Ungekürzte Lesung)

Nikola Hotel

BESTSELLER

Davyan (Band 1): Der Aschenprinz

C.M. Spoerri

BESTSELLER

Der Laden in der Mondlichtgasse (Ungekürzte Lesung)

Hiyoko Kurisu

BESTSELLER

Nightblood Prince - Nightblood Prince, Band 1 (Ungekürzte Lesung)

Firebird - Flammensturm, Teil 1 (Ungekürzt)

Juliette Cross

BESTSELLER

Der Sheriff und die Fremde

Gentle Heart - Scarlet Luck, Teil 3 (Ungekürzt)

Until I Get You - Fairview Hockey, Teil 1 (Ungekürzt)

Blackwell Companions to Philosophy

Title page

Notes on Contributors

Part I: Biography and New Work

1: Intellectual Biography of David Lewis (1941–2001): Early Influences

1.1 Childhood

1.2 Swarthmore: The First Two Years

1.3 Oxford

1.4 Swarthmore: Second Two Years

1.5 The Hudson Institute

1.6 Graduate School: Australia I, Jack Smart

1.7 UCLA

1.8 Australia II: David Armstrong

1.9 Australia III: The First Visit

1.10 Princeton

1.11 Australia IV: 1976

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

2: Counterparts of States of Affairs

Acknowledgments

Note

References

3: Reply to Dana Scott, “Is There Life on Possible Worlds?”

Note

Part II: Methodology and Context

4: Lewis's Philosophical Method

4.1 Starting Points: Science and Common Sense

4.2 After the Starting Points: Defining Theoretical Roles, Finding Deservers

4.3 Counting the Costs

4.4 Conclusion

Notes

References

5: On Metaphysical Analysis

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Some Background on Holes

5.3 The Nature of Space

5.4 Space, Worlds, and Holes

5.5 Metaphysics and Analysis

5.6 Conclusion

Notes

References

6: A Lewisian History of Philosophy

6.1 Properties

6.2 Carving at the Joints

6.3 Persistence

6.4 Causality

6.5 Modality

6.6 Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

7: David Lewis's Place in Analytic Philosophy

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

Part III: Metaphysics and Science

8: Humean Supervenience

8.1 What Is Humean Supervenience?

8.2 Supervenience

8.3 What Is Perfect Naturalness?

8.4 Humean Supervenience and Other Humean Theses

8.5 Why Care about Humean Supervenience

8.6 Points, Vectors, and Lewis

References

9: No Work for a Theory of Universals

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Best System Accounts of Laws

9.3 Assessing the Options

9.4 Extending the Account

9.5 Another Approach

9.6 Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

10: Hume's Dictum and Metaphysical Modality: Lewis's Combinatorialism

Introduction

10.1 HD and Its Recurrent Role in Lewis's Work

10.2 HD and Lewis's Combinatorialism

10.3 Undergeneration Concerns for Lewis's Combinatorialism

10.4 The End Game

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

11: Truthmaking: With and Without Counterpart Theory

11.1 The Theory of Truthmaking

11.2 Truthmaking and States of Affairs

11.3 Truthmaking and Theories of Truth

11.4 Lewis's Critique of (TM) and a States-of-Affairs Ontology

11.5 (TM) and a States-of-Affairs Ontology, Reconsidered

11.6 Truth Supervenes on Being

Notes

References

12: How to Be Humean

The Doctrine and the Program

12.1 Humean Supervenience and the Failure of Content-Preserving Reduction

12.2 A Different Conception of Humean Reduction: Identifying Truthmakers

12.3 Digging Deeper

12.4 Conclusion

Notes

References

13: Where (in Logical Space) Is God?

13.1 Background and Scene-Setting

13.2 The God of the Philosophers

13.3 Free Will

13.4 Divine Evil

13.5 Atonement as Penal Substitution

13.6 The Many-Worlds Theodicy

Notes

14:

De Re

Modality, Essentialism, and Lewis's Humeanism

14.1 Introduction

14.2

De Re

Modality and Counterpart Theory

14.3 Counterpart Theory and the Inconstancy of

De Re

Modal Predication

14.4 Truthmaking and Counterpart Theory

14.5 Lewis versus School Metaphysics

14.6 Humean Supervenience and

De Re

Modality

Notes

References

15: David Lewis on Persistence

15.1 Persistence and Humean Supervenience

15.2 In Defense of Stages

15.3 Temporary Intrinsics

15.4 Stages, or Sums of Stages?

Acknowledgments

References

16: “Perfectly Understood, Unproblematic, and Certain”: Lewis on Mereology

16.1 Four Theses about Composition

16.2 First Thesis: Uniqueness

16.3 Second Thesis: Unrestricted Composition

16.4 First Reflection: Motivating Mereological Principles

16.5 Second Reflection: Persistence

16.6 Third Thesis: Ontological Innocence

16.7 Fourth Thesis: Unmysteriousness

16.8 Fourth Reflection: Privileging Mereology

References

17: Humean Reductionism about Laws of Nature

17.1 Introduction

17.2 Preliminaries

17.3 The Elements of Humean Reductionism

17.4 The Best System Account: An Overview

17.5 A Menu of Challenges to the BSA

17.6 A Solution and a Problem

17.7 Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

List of Tables

Table 9.1 The different positions that authors have taken in recent literature

Diagram 20.1

Diagram 20.2

List of Illustrations

Figure 1.1 Going home from the MCG after a loss to Collingwood, 1984. © Stephanie Lewis 2013.

Figure 1.2 Photo by Ewart Lewis, November 1950.

Figure 1.3 David Lewis at age 14. Photo by Ewart Lewis.

Figure 1.4 David Lewis and Jack Smart. Belcunda, South Australia, August 1971. © Stephanie Lewis.

Figure 1.5 The Two Davids, Glenogil Station, Victoria. August 1976. © Stephanie Lewis.

Figure 1.6 North Queensland, 1990. © Stephanie Lewis.

Figure 18.1 A diagram of a coin toss setup, from Diaconis (1998, 803). The

axis represents the coin's initial upward velocity v, while the y axis represents the angular velocity ω of its spinning. Assuming the coin begins with the heads side up, the black points represent initial conditions that lead to a heads outcome, while the white points represent initial conditions that lead to a tails outcome. Reprinted by kind permission of

Quarterly of Applied Mathematics

Figure 19.1 The place of causation in Lewis's program of Humean supervenience. Concepts that are not part of metaphysics proper are marked with an asterisk. Created by Christopher Hitchcock.

Figure 19.2 Interrelationships among concepts introduced in Lewis's analyses of causation, rational decision, and disposition. The arrow marked with a question mark corresponds to my own proposal. Created by Christopher Hitchcock.

Figure 26.1

Figure 27.1 Moving probability.

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Start Reading

CHAPTER 1

Index

Pages

xii

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

172

173

174

175

176

177

178

179

180

181

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

193

194

195

196

197

198

199

200

201

202

203

204

205

206

207

208

209

210

211

212

213

214

215

216

217

218

219

220

221

222

223

224

225

226

227

228

229

230

231

232

233

234

235

236

237

238

239

240

241

242

243

244

245

246

247

248

249

250

251

252

253

254

255

256

257

258

259

260

261

262

263

264

265

266

267

268

269

270

271

272

273

274

275

276

277

278

279

280

281

282

283

284

285

286

287

288

289

290

291

292

293

294

295

296

297

298

299

300

301

302

303

304

305

306

307

308

309

310

311

312

315

316

317

318

319

320

321

322

323

324

325

326

327

328

329

330

331

332

333

334

335

336

337

338

339

340

341

342

343

344

345

346

347

348

349

350

351

352

353

354

355

356

357

358

359

360

361

362

363

364

365

366

367

368

369

370

371

372

373

374

375

376

377

378

379

380

381

382

383

384

385

386

387

388

389

390

391

392

393

394

395

396

397

398

399

400

401

402

403

404

405

406

407

408

409

410

411

412

413

414

415

416

417

418

419

420

421

422

423

424

425

426

427

428

429

430

431

432

433

434

435

436

437

438

439

440

441

442

443

444

445

446

447

448

449

450

451

452

453

454

455

456

457

458

459

460

461

462

463

464

465

466

467

468

469

470

473

474

475

476

477

478

479

480

481

482

483

484

485

486

487

488

489

490

491

492

493

494

495

496

497

498

499

500

501

502

503

504

505

506

507

508

509

510

511

512

513

514

515

516

517

518

519

520

521

522

523

524

525

526

527

528

529

530

531

532

535

536

537

538

539

540

541

542

543

544

545

546

547

548

549

550

551

552

553

554

555

556

557

558

559

560

561

562

563

564

565

566

567

568

569

570

571

572

573

574

575

576

577

578

579

580

Blackwell Companions to Philosophy

This outstanding student reference series offers a comprehensive and authoritative survey of philosophy as a whole. Written by today's leading philosophers, each volume provides lucid and engaging coverage of the key figures, terms, topics, and problems of the field. Taken together, the volumes provide the ideal basis for course use, representing an unparalleled work of reference for students and specialists alike.

Already published in the series:

The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Second Edition

Edited by Nicholas Bunnin and Eric Tsui-James

A Companion to Ethics

Edited by Peter Singer

A Companion to Aesthetics, Second Edition

Edited by Stephen Davies, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Robert Hopkins, Robert Stecker, and David E. Cooper

A Companion to Epistemology, Second Edition

Edited by Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa and Matthias Steup

A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (two-volume set), Second Edition

Edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit

A Companion to Philosophy of Mind

Edited by Samuel Guttenplan

A Companion to Metaphysics, Second Edition

Edited by Jaegwon Kim, Ernest Sosa and Gary S. Rosenkrantz

A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, Second Edition

Edited by Dennis Patterson

A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Second Edition

Edited by Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper, and Philip L. Quinn

A Companion to the Philosophy of Language

Edited by Bob Hale and Crispin Wright

A Companion to World Philosophies

Edited by Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe

A Companion to Continental Philosophy

Edited by Simon Critchley and William Schroeder

A Companion to Feminist Philosophy

Edited by Alison M. Jaggar and Iris Marion Young

A Companion to Cognitive Science

Edited by William Bechtel and George Graham

A Companion to Bioethics, Second Edition

Edited by Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer

A Companion to the Philosophers

Edited by Robert L. Arrington

A Companion to Business Ethics

Edited by Robert E. Frederick

A Companion to the Philosophy of Science

Edited by W. H. Newton-Smith

A Companion to Environmental Philosophy

Edited by Dale Jamieson

A Companion to Analytic Philosophy

Edited by A. P. Martinich and David Sosa

A Companion to Genethics

Edited by Justine Burley and John Harris

A Companion to Philosophical Logic

Edited by Dale Jacquette

A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy

Edited by Steven Nadler

A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages

Edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone

A Companion to African-American Philosophy

Edited by Tommy L. Lott and John P. Pittman

A Companion to Applied Ethics

Edited by R. G. Frey and Christopher Heath Wellman

A Companion to the Philosophy of Education

Edited by Randall Curren

A Companion to African Philosophy

Edited by Kwasi Wiredu

A Companion to Heidegger

Edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall

A Companion to Rationalism

Edited by Alan Nelson

A Companion to Pragmatism

Edited by John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis

A Companion to Ancient Philosophy

Edited by Mary Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin

A Companion to Nietzsche

Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson

A Companion to Socrates

Edited by Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar

A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism

Edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall

A Companion to Kant

Edited by Graham Bird

A Companion to Plato

Edited by Hugh H. Benson

A Companion to Descartes

Edited by Janet Broughton and John Carriero

A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology

Edited by Sahotra Sarkar and Anya Plutynski

A Companion to Hume

Edited by Elizabeth S. Radcliffe

A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography

Edited by Aviezer Tucker

A Companion to Aristotle

Edited by Georgios Anagnostopoulos

A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

Edited by Jan-Kyrre Berg Olsen, Stig Andur Pedersen, and Vincent F. Hendricks

A Companion to Latin American Philosophy

Edited by Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, and Otávio Bueno

A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature

Edited by Garry L. Hagberg and Walter Jost

A Companion to the Philosophy of Action

Edited by Timothy O'Connor and Constantine Sandis

A Companion to Relativism

Edited by Steven D. Hales

A Companion to Hegel

Edited by Stephen Houlgate and Michael Baur

A Companion to Schopenhauer

Edited by Bart Vandenabeele

A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy

Edited by Steven M. Emmanuel

A Companion to Foucault

Edited by Christopher Falzon, Timothy O'Leary, and Jana Sawicki

A Companion to the Philosophy of Time

Edited by Heather Dyke and Adrian Bardon

A Companion to Donald Davidson

Edited by Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig

A Companion to Rawls

Edited by Jon Mandle and David Reidy

A Companion to W.V.O. Quine

Edited by Gilbert Harman and Ernest Lepore

A Companion to Derrida

Edited by Zeynep Direk and Leonard Lawlor

A Companion to David Lewis

Edited by Barry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer

Forthcoming:

A Companion to Locke

Edited by Matthew Stuart

A Companion to Mill

Edited by Christopher Macleod and Dale E. Miller

This edition first published 2015

Registered Office

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial Offices

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of Barry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

C 9781118388181

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Princeton University, Office of Communications, photo: R. Mathews

Notes on Contributors

Helen Beebee is Samuel Hall Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on issues surrounding Humeanism and its rivals. She is the author of Hume on Causation (Routledge 2006) and Free Will: An Introduction (Palgrave 2013).

Karen Bennett is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. She is the co-editor of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, and the author of many articles in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Her book Making Things Up is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.

David Braddon-Mitchell is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney; he works in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and metaethics, and has published in these areas in various journals including Mind, The Journal of Philosophy, Noûs, Philosophical Studies, Erkenntnis, and Synthese.

Phillip Bricker is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He wrote his doctoral dissertation at Princeton University under the direction of David Lewis. He works primarily in metaphysics, especially issues in modality and ontology.

Rachael Briggs splits her time as a research fellow between the Australian National University and Griffith University. Her research interests include formal epistemology, metaphysics (particularly the metaphysics of chance), and preference-satisfaction theories of wellbeing.

John P. Burgess is the John N. Woodhull Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1975. He is author or co-author of eight books and scores of papers and reviews in logic and related areas of philosophy.

John Collins completed a PhD at Princeton under David Lewis's supervision. He is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. His current research centers on the nature of simple belief, the role of modal principles in epistemology, the foundations of causal decision theory, and the metaphysics of dispositions.

M. Eddon is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her primary area of research is metaphysics, with interests in fundamentality, quantity, mereology, and intrinsicality.

Alan Hájek is Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University (since 2005). He works mainly in formal epistemology, the philosophical foundations of probability, decision theory, philosophy of science, metaphilosophy, philosophical logic, and philosophy of religion. He received his PhD at Princeton University, and worked for 12 years at Caltech.

Ned Hall teaches philosophy at Harvard University, and works primarily on topics in metaphysics and epistemology that overlap with philosophy of science (causation, laws of nature, objective chance and its relation to credence – all the fun stuff, in other words).

Katherine Hawley is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She is the author of How Things Persist (Oxford University Press 2001) and of Trust: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2012), as well as numerous papers within metaphysics and beyond.

Christopher Hitchcock is Professor of Philosophy at the California Institute of Technology. He has published extensively on the topic of causation, including articles in most of the leading philosophy journals, as well as venues in computer science, law, and psychology. He is also the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Causation.

Richard Holton is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Peterhouse. He works in many different fields, and is the author of Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Jenann Ismael is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. She has published two books and numerous articles. Her research focuses on issues related to philosophy of physics including the nature of space and time, what quantum phenomena are telling us about the world, how fundamental ontology relates to higher level structures, and how we ourselves fit into the natural order.

Simon Keller is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington. He has published widely on topics in ethics and political philosophy. He is the author of The Limits of Loyalty and Partiality.

Rae Langton is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She works in ethics, metaphysics, feminist philosophy, and a range of other areas. She is author of Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves (Oxford University Press 1998) and Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification (Oxford University Press 2009).

Ernie Lepore is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University. He has published in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind.

Stephanie R. Lewis taught philosophy from 1971 until 1984. When she realized that a tenured job was a complete impossibility, she went to Wharton and got an MBA. She has worked in public finance since then; nonetheless she is a philosopher first and last.

Fraser MacBride is Professor of Logic & Rhetoric at Glasgow University. He works on metaphysics and the philosophy of mathematics and is writing a book on the history of analytic philosophy. His recent publications include “How Involved Do You Want to Be in a Non-Symmetric Relationship?,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

C.J.G. Meacham is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His main interests are in formal epistemology, decision theory, and the philosophy of physics.

Kristie Miller is an Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, Australia. She works primarily in metaphysics, in particular on the nature of time and persistence. Her most recent work focuses on the intersection of agency and timelessness.

Daniel Nolan is Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. He is the author of Topics in the Philosophy of Possible Worlds (Routledge) and David Lewis (Acumen/McGill-Queens), and articles in journals including Noûs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Studies, and Analysis. He works primarily in metaphysics.

Barbara H. Partee is Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her research centers on formal semantics; she is writing a book on the history of formal semantics. She also teaches semantics in Moscow and has worked with Russian colleagues on Slavic semantics.

Robert Pasnau is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado. He works in the areas of metaphysics and knowledge, and especially the history of these subjects. He is the editor of Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy.

Peter Railton is Perrin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. David Lewis was his thesis supervisor. Railton's primary research has been in the philosophy of science, moral philosophy, and aesthetics. Facts, Values, and Norms (Cambridge University Press 2003) collects some of his papers in ethics and metaethics.

Craige Roberts is Professor of Linguistics and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University. Her work in formal semantics and pragmatics focuses on the nature of the context of utterance and the pragmatics of questions, presupposition, modals and attitude predicates, anaphora and reference, and their interactions in discourse.

Gideon Rosen is Stuart Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author (with John P. Burgess) of A Subject with No Object (Oxford 1997) and co-editor of the forthcoming Norton Introduction to Philosophy.

Jonathan Schaffer is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. His research centers on metaphysics, epistemology, and language, and his publications include “Monism: The Priority of the Whole,” “On What Grounds What,” and “Knowing the Answer.”

Wolfgang Schwarz is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra. He works on topics in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and logic.

Scott Soames is Distinguished Professor and Director of the School of Philosophy at USC. His recent books (from Princeton University Press) include What Is Meaning?, Philosophy of Language, The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy Vol. 1, and Analytic Philosophy in America and Other Essays. Rethinking Language, Mind, and Meaning is forthcoming.

Robert Stalnaker is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT. He is the author of Inquiry (MIT Press 1984), Our Knowledge of the Internal World (Oxford University Press 2008), Mere Possibilities (Princeton University Press 2010), and two collections of papers, Content and Context (Oxford University Press 1999) and Ways a World Might Be (Oxford University Press 2003).

Daniel Stoljar is Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He is the author of Ignorance and Imagination (Oxford University Press 2006) and Physicalism (Routledge 2010) and co-editor of There's Something about Mary (MIT Press 2004) and Introspection and Consciousness (Oxford University Press 2012).

Matthew Stone completed his PhD in the Computer and Information Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1998. Since then he has had an appointment in the Computer Science Department and Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Stone has had visiting positions at the University of Edinburgh and the Universität Potsdam. He works on problems of meaning in human–human and human–computer conversation.

Brian Weatherson is Marshall M. Weinberg Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. His recent research is on the philosophical significance of normative uncertainty, and on the role practical and theoretical interests play in the connections between knowledge, belief, and credences.

J.R.G. Williams is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Leeds. Working in the philosophy of logic, language, metaphysics, and formal epistemology, he directs the ERC Nature of Representation project. Publications include “Decision Making under Indeterminacy,” Philosophers' Imprint (2014), “Counterfactual Triviality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2012), “Eligibility and Inscrutability,” Philosophical Review (2007).

Jessica Wilson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. Her primary research interests are in general metaphysics (especially modality and indeterminacy) and the metaphysics of science (especially inter-theoretic relations). Recent publications include “What Is Hume's Dictum, and Why Believe It?,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2010), “Fundamental Determinables,” Philosopher's Imprint (2011), and “A Determination-Based Account of Metaphysical Indeterminacy,” Inquiry (2013). She is writing a book titled Metaphysical Emergence.

Part IBiography and New Work

1Intellectual Biography of David Lewis (1941–2001)Early Influences

Stephanie R. Lewis

This chapter is not a cradle-to-grave intellectual biography of David Lewis. In particular, it does not try to be comprehensive about the origins of his views or of how he came to hold them. Its purpose is to exhibit elements of the origins of the David Lewis we knew, philosopher and human being, and whose works we know. It describes important influences on David as a child, as an adolescent, and as a young man.

Let me begin with the last, and most important, of the forces that shaped the adult David, and made him the philosopher that he was. Not the only influence: nothing would have made David into the philosopher he was if he didn't have the wherewithal to begin with.

David, and usually I as well, made many visits to Australia: in 1971, in 1976, and nearly every year (except 2000, the year of David's kidney transplant) from 1979 right through 2001. He gave talks, went to talks, conversed with many people, and whenever he was in the right place at the right time he attended the Australasian Association of Philosophy conference. We toured around and enjoyed the urban amenities of Melbourne and, to a lesser extent, Sydney. And, starting in 1980, we went to the footy (Figure 1.1). David, who in general had no interest whatever in sport, somehow became a one-eyed supporter of the Essendon Football Club, in the Victorian (subsequently, the Australian) Football League. He was buried with his Essendon membership card in his pocket.

Figure 1.1

Going home from the MCG after a loss to Collingwood, 1984.

In July of 2002, nearly a year after David's death, I visited Australia by myself, and attended the Australasian Association of Philosophy conference. At the conference dinner, someone rose and asked us all to take a moment to remember David. After a minute or so, they shoved the microphone at me and asked me to say something. My only preparation for this was three glasses of wine. The first words that came out of my mouth were “Australia made David.” I must have said more, but I have no recollection at all of what it might have been.

1.1 Childhood

David was born into an academic household in Oberlin, Ohio, on September 28, 1941. He was the eldest of three children. His father, John D. Lewis, was professor of government at Oberlin College, where he taught from 1936 until his retirement in 1972. John was one of the great Oberlin teachers of his time, an Oberlin oligarch. As student and faculty member, he was at Oberlin for 41 years. John hadn't much standing as a scholar or researcher, especially in the later part of his career; his mark was on his generations of students, including Cecilia Kenyon, Kenneth N. Waltz, Sheldon Wolin, and W. Carey McWilliams Jr. Many others in other careers expressed their gratitude for his intellectual influence on them.

David's mother, Ewart Kellogg Lewis, was the scholar, by inclination, anyway. Unlike her husband, she came from an academic family. She was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, also Phi Beta Kappa, having fled Wellesley College, and she held the PhD from the University of Wisconsin. She published Medieval Political Ideas (1954), a collection of critical translations and introductory essays of medieval philosophers and political theorists. She published no other scholarly works that I can find. Her reputation in medieval political theory survives.

She had no formal teaching career to speak of. Oberlin had, or was thought to have, a nepotism rule, so, other than casual employment in the history department, a post at Oberlin College was denied her. Neither she nor her husband was inclined to challenge this and, in any case, her employment at Oberlin ended after a squabble over the appointment of another faculty spouse. She did have an instructorship at Western Reserve University in Cleveland for three years.

She was an academic to the core, even though running the household fell to her. She taught her children to read early, and strongly encouraged David's native bookishness. When David was nine or ten years old he had an attack of polio, and, unrelated to this, a bone cyst in his thigh was discovered. He had a transplant of bone chips to cure the cyst, and as a consequence spent several weeks in, or mostly in, bed. Ewart taught him Latin. (He also took Latin in high school.) She also taught him to type properly.

David, born of two Phi Beta Kappa academics, was the eldest of three siblings. Being the eldest, and a little ungovernable, and being recognized from an early age as someone with intellectual curiosity and motivation, he was allowed to follow his own inclinations about his studies and activities.

The portion of this chapter dealing with David's childhood and early adolescence draws partly on Lewis family myth and folklore, but primarily on an autobiography he wrote, at the age of 14, in his next-to-last year of high school. It doesn't show much introspection: it has a lot of facts and family history in it. But it does describe his interests at various times. He, like most smart kids, read a lot and was interested in science. The autobiography has next to nothing in it about school friends, and most of the stories of family interactions are about his father. He was a solitary boy, planning and doing projects by himself, and reading. From what he says about various science projects his attention span appeared, even as a small child, to be unbounded. He wasn't unsocial but, if the autobiography is accurate, most of his interactions were with adults. There is only one mention of a friend of his own age.

It isn't as if David didn't care for his siblings, nor they for him. There is a photo of David from 1950, when he was nine years old, sitting in his father's study at their house, teaching school to his brother Donald, then five years old, and his sister Ellen, then three. They are listening raptly, their books open before them. The posture of David explaining something to an attentive audience will strike anybody who knew him as familiar (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2

Photo by Ewart Lewis, November 1950.

For all practical purposes, David barely went to high school. Between the fall of 1954 and June of 1957, his high school years, he attended several courses at Oberlin, General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry among them, and took the exams and did the lab work. He had a chemistry lab in the basement of the Lewis house, where he did chemistry experiments and glassblowing. (And no, he never did nearly blow up the house.) One summer he worked on a project in a college lab, supervised by Professor Renfrow, in the Oberlin chemistry department. David Sanford remembers him from Oberlin chemistry classes as smarter and better prepared than any of the other students.1

David also showed early signs of the highmindedness that characterized him for his entire life. In a draft of his essay to accompany his application to Swarthmore College, written in the spring of 1957, he says:2

Last spring [of 1956], when a high school teacher was fired without reasons given, I was one of five students who drew up and circulated a petition asking the [Oberlin] Board of Education to give reasons. This petition, signed by about 60% of the High School students, was followed by a series of petitions and protests by teachers and citizens which finally resulted in a thorough investigation of the school situation by the Board of Education, and the replacement of the Superintendent of Schools by a new man who is initiating several much-needed reforms, I got very much interested in the whole situation and have been attending School board meetings regularly since then.

In the course of high school, his interests evolved and he continued to grow into the David we knew. Here is the last section of that autobiography: he was 14 when he wrote it, in 1955 [Figure 1.3], and there is no evidence whatever of ghostwriting (Ewart did type it) by either his mother or his father. David is uncharacteristically pompous, but the voice is his own.

Figure 1.3

David Lewis at age 14.

Photo by Ewart Lewis.

LOOKING AHEAD

This, then, is the story up to now. But it is still incomplete. After all, one's first fourteen years are not the greater part of life; it is necessary to say something about the future. Moreover, this has been a record primarily of events: I have not yet said much about what I think of it all. And these are important; for an event is almost meaningless, as I see it, in comparison with an idea.

To take first the matter of concrete plans for the future, I must begin by saying that I am not sure of any of it. I expect to finish high school in the next year, taking, perhaps, some courses at Oberlin College also. After that, I intend to enter some college; I do not know where. I would like to go to a serious college, preferably a small one, where I can devote my time to work without being made to seem abnormal by doing so. I hope to get a complete liberal education, not just a technical one. It is for this reason that I am doing so much college work now; the programs for one majoring in a technical field in college are all too often so time-consuming that I would not be able to work on anything else. I expect to concentrate on technical studies in graduate school, but in college I want some freedom in arranging my schedule. I have been starting recently to consider the choice of a college, but this has been very difficult. The only place that seems to meet my requirements is Oberlin, and my parents and I agree that I should go away from home for college.

I am not sure what I want to study. Until very recently I expected to concentrate in chemistry, but I am losing some of my interest in it now. I do not know whether I am actually becoming tired of it simply because I have been concentrating on it so heavily for the last three years, or whether it is really not my proper field. Of course, it may also be that I am simply reacting to the very dull lectures which I hear at my chemistry class at the college.

I have many other things besides chemistry which I am interested in. I particularly like mathematics. Its logic, in particular, appeals to me. I do not like the mechanical processes where one puts in numbers and “turns the crank” to find a solution, nor do I like the problems of applied mathematics. But the basic concepts, the logic, the reaching of conclusions from reasoning alone, these are for me. I am also interested in some of the ideas of philosophy, metaphysics especially, although I have never yet made a detailed study of them. I have done some thinking of my own along these lines, and, of course, my results turn out to have been around for centuries.

I am interested, though not quite so much, in several other subjects. For instance, during my freshman year in high school I became very much interested in Latin and in the history of the Romans. I also am interested in other sciences, with the exception of biology, which leaves me quite bored. Probably the reason for this is that biology seems to me to be just a jumble of dull information, whereas the other sciences are logical structures.

After college I do not know just what I want to do. If I specialize in science, I will be able to get all sorts of industrial jobs. But this does not appeal to me. It is all a matter of intensely practical, routine work. My interest is not here so much as it is in the theory. Perhaps the best thing would be to enter the field of college teaching. Here I could work on any project I pleased. I would also be with people of my own sort. If I decide to work in some other field, I can say nothing of what I would be doing.

And now for the ideas I have been able to gather. My philosophy is, more than anything else, philosophy in the literal sense, love of knowledge; but not just knowledge; of understanding the realities of the universe, the reasons for everything. For I feel that there must be a cause for everything, that the past determines the future, that there must be certain natural laws, or perhaps only one, such that it would be possible to deduce all the features of the universe from it alone. This is a scientist's way of looking at the universe; I do not deny that there may be other ways which can reveal truths unknowable from the viewpoint of pure reason. Religion is such a way, so perhaps is art. My feeling about religion is that I cannot accept the elaborate system of details which an organized religion tends to build up, that it is in conflict with all reason. I do not find such a simple solution, though, to be the question of the existence of some kind of a God. My attitude is that it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God by logic. Indeed, not only impossible, but very foolish, as though I were to try to prove mathematically that my eyes are blue [they were]. The existence of God and the domain of logic are, I feel, absolutely separate. These are my views; I would not be so dogmatic as to say that there is any reason whatever to consider them correct.

I can see no other meaning in life except the gaining of knowledge; but this is rather meaningless, a rationalization of the fact that I have devoted myself so much to the gaining of knowledge, to the over-exclusion of other aspects of life. I can see that this is not desirable and I am trying to do something about it, although it is a slow and rather difficult business. Nevertheless, I feel that I am making some progress.

I feel that the world is good, although it is sometimes hard to see. But on the whole, I think it is good. As for my feelings on the problems of the world, I am rather idealistic. I think this is right, but it puts me somewhat at a disadvantage in practical affairs.

* * *

These are the events and the ideas of my life until now; it remains for the reader to judge them.

The End

David finished his senior year of high school but did not get a diploma: a civics requirement or something had not been met. So he was not a high school graduate, and thus was barred from serving in the Ohio National Guard (not that he wanted to). He did get a Merit Scholarship. Shortly before he turned 16, in September of 1957, he began his freshman year at Swarthmore College.

1.2 Swarthmore: The First Two Years

David had been solitary, though apparently not lonely, as a child. At Swarthmore he made friends, pretty much instantaneously. Several of these friendships endured for the rest of his life. Among his contemporaries were many future philosophers: among them, Allan Gibbard, Gil Harman and Peter Unger, and the linguist Barbara Hall, later Partee. He quickly became a part of the Swarthmore folkie scene.

He started out with the intention of majoring in chemistry, but took philosophy classes as well: in his sophomore year, he took Intro to Philosophy and Symbolic Logic. Most of his grades were As, but he did get some Bs in science courses.

Between his sophomore and junior years, the year he turned 18, the family spent a year at Oxford University. This was the year 1959–60. John had a research fellowship; though no publications followed upon it. He drove his new Jaguar sedan every day from their house in Wheatley to St Catherine's Society, which was not yet a college. He wore tweeds and a “Toad of Toad Hall” cloth cap. Ewart didn't have any college appointment. She read and conversed widely, and had a big part in the family excursions to various places in England and France, but her role was at home.

1.3 Oxford

David took a break from chemistry and physics. He did philosophy. He was treated by his father's college, St Catherine's Society (as it then was), as an undergraduate student, and assigned to the college philosophy tutor, John Simopoulos, who took one look at him and handed him off to Iris Murdoch. She was then a philosophy tutor at St Anne's College. He wrote weekly papers for her and discussed them in the one-on-one tutorials which were than a part of an Oxford undergraduate's study. He also attended lectures by, among others, Grice, Strawson, Ryle, and J.L. Austin. Despite repeated exposure to the ordinary-language culture of Oxford at the time, David never caught the disease.

Murdoch wrote letters of recommendation for David. Here is what she said about him (she sent him this letter also):

ST ANNE'S COLLEGE

OXFORD June 15 1960

Telephone 57417

Mr David Lewis has worked with me on moral philosophy for the best part of three terms during his stay in Oxford. About half of this time was spent on studying traditional philosophers (Hume, Kant, also Mill, Moore and others) and the other half on looking at contemporary theories, especially in relation to freedom, and in discussing versions of Mr Lewis' own ideas on the latter subject. There is no doubt that Mr Lewis is a very gifted young man indeed and has a true talent for philosophy. Were he to remain in that subject (which unfortunately appears to be unlikely) I should advise him to forget about his own theories for a while and spend time grappling with difficult and unfamiliar ideas in the great philosophers of the past. This however is to say no more than that Mr Lewis is young and (naturally) still in need of education. His own ideas in fact are both interesting and original. His work has been excellent, certainly “alpha” throughout.

Iris Murdoch

Fellow and Tutor

(Reprinted by kind permission of Iris Murdoch.)

And here is a remark she made in a letter to him, about graduate school letters of reference she had been doing for him (reprinted by kind permission of the Estate of Iris Murdoch):

St Anne's College

Oxford

Nov 23 1961

Dear David,

Thanks for your letter [there is no copy of this letter in David's files]. I've sent off the two forms. (How is your emotional maturity nowadays? I found it hard to think of a mark for that.) I will do the other two testimonials very soon. I think I could commend Black & Malcolm for my (indirect) knowledge of them. Mrs Foot lately has had a very lively & profitable sojourn at Cornell. Anyway, best of wishes. I see you don't list Yale, rightly, I'm sure. Bulldog, bulldog etc.

Yours,

Iris

(Reprinted by kind permission of Iris Murdoch.)

1.4 Swarthmore: Second Two Years

David returned to Swarthmore as a philosophy major. (Swarthmore wouldn't let him do philosophy as a related minor along with a science major.) He did take advanced calculus, and two more physics courses, and he attended a course in linguistics at Penn with Henry Hiz. But it was otherwise all philosophy. He either took or sat in on most of the courses offered by the small philosophy department at Swarthmore. Jerry Shaffer was among David's favorite teachers. David continued to work in moral philosophy: a research project, supervised by Monroe Beardsley, resulted in Can Ethics be Reasonable?, a 40-page essay, typed, single-spaced, with practically no margins. (David kept a copy, which I have.) The typewriter is the one he used for the rest of his life.

In the essay he says that “personality is the sum of actual and potential behavior…” most of which patterns of behavior are “ideal forms of life.” Ethical thought consists in “compositing, presenting, elaborating, and relating these ideal forms of life.”3 To this view he adds: “To this model must be added social morality, a law-like system of regulating overt acts so as to reconcile conflicting interests of different people.”4 He concludes the essay thus:

To summarise: “good,” “right,” “ought,” “should,” “duty,” “obligation,” “fortunate,” “harm,” “benefit,” “desirable,” “wicked,” “immoral,” “choiceworthy,” (if there is any such word) etc. get their meaning among some or all of the following components:

Expression of decision; “internal motivation.”A small range of purely descriptive meanings, logically independent of attitude or conduct.In the case of “good” and perhaps “right” a large range of attributive descriptive meaning, at least sometimes with dependence on attitude and conduct on pain of irony or inappropriateness, if not of falsehood.To go proxy for reasons within a context of purpose. Perhaps with the implication on pain of irony or inappropriateness that the purpose is itself supported by empathically understood ideals.To go proxy for reasons, empathically understood ideals, which for some reason there is no need to detail. Some of these words are limited to going proxy for only certain classes of ideals. If these words have a purely ethical sense, this is it.5

He acknowledges the strong influence of several of Murdoch's published works in philosophy on the essay.

He graduated from Swarthmore in 1962, with high honors in philosophy and election to Phi Beta Kappa.

1.5 The Hudson Institute

Between 1962 and 1975, David was a part-time member of staff at the Hudson Institute, a policy think tank then concerned with issues in strategy and deterrence and nuclear weapons policy. He worked on research assignments, often with Herman Kahn, then Hudson's director, and with Max Singer. Hudson now has the reputation of being a conservative organization; then it was more concerned with the technical aspects of nuclear weapons, disarmament policy issues, and Kahn's interest in what Kahn called “futurology.” David developed an interest in game theory as a result of the Hudson work.

1.6 Graduate School: Australia I, Jack Smart

David arrived at Harvard in 1962, bringing with him his native mind–body identity theory, space–time four-dimensionalism, his Humeanism about causation, his Rylean behaviorism, his immunity to ordinary-language philosophy, and his disdain for political correctness. In the fall of 1963 he attended a seminar given by J.J.C. Smart, then visiting Harvard from Adelaide, on “Philosophical Problems of Space and Time.” This was the beginning of a friendship that lasted nearly 40 years, until David's death in 2001 (Figure 1.4). They conversed about philosophy and exchanged letters on philosophy.

Figure 1.4

David Lewis and Jack Smart. Belcunda, South Australia, August 1971.

Jack invited David to give the Gavin David Young lectures at Adelaide University in August of 1971.

At Harvard, David worked with W.V. Quine and with Hilary Putnam, going to MIT for Putnam's seminars before Putnam moved to Harvard. He also went to linguistics seminars at MIT. He admired Quine's philosophical style and prose style as well; David learned to write, and speak, clearly and concisely about even the most technical matters in philosophy. He used to quote C.G. Hempel with approval: “it adds neither to the rigor of the argument nor the clarity of the exposition to say that a man M crossed the street S.”

David's thesis, Conventions of Language, grew out of his interest in language, encouraged by Quine, and also out of David's own continuing interest in game theory. Metaphysics was not yet at the center of his interests. The game theory aspects of his theory of convention owed a lot to his Hudson Institute work and to conversations with Thomas Schelling. Schelling's prose style, in The Strategy of Conflict (1960), also served as a model for David's writing.

1.7 UCLA

David and I went to UCLA in 1966, he as an assistant professor and me as a graduate student in philosophy. He got interested in formal semantics, and had many discussions with Richard Montague and with Barbara Hall Partee. David went to Montague's seminars on formal semantics. He and Hans Kamp had a lot of discussion on the subject, and to a lesser extent David conversed with David Kaplan as well. And all the while he wrote and he wrote and he wrote.

1.8 Australia II: David Armstrong

In 1968 David Armstrong was visiting at Stanford. He and David Lewis met and talked. This began a friendship and a philosophical interchange, carried on in letters and conversations, for the rest of David's life.

1.9 Australia III: The First Visit

When we arrived in Sydney in July of 1971, we stayed for several days with David Armstrong and his first wife, Madeleine. This was the beginning of the philosophical conversations between the two Davids.

In August of 1971 David delivered the Gavin David Young lectures at Adelaide University. The topic was time travel. This was the first of, if I have counted right, 26 visits. This was for two months, and gave David the chance to go around to most of the philosophy departments at Australian universities – we missed Perth – and give talks, go to talks, and get to know people. And he wrote and he wrote and he wrote.

The effect on David cannot be overstated. He found many friends, and many, many opportunities to discuss matters of common interest. And he enjoyed himself, not least because he didn't have any teaching or departmental responsibilities. Like the rest of his Australia trips, it amounted to study leave.

1.10 Princeton

David arrived at Princeton in the fall of 1971, where he taught for the rest of his life. This essay looks at David's early life, and thus doesn't say much of anything about his Princeton career. It is worth mentioning that he had over 30 PhD students, either entirely or partly under his supervision, many of whom now ornament the profession.

1.11 Australia IV: 1976

David made his second visit to Australia in July and August of 1976. David and Madeleine Armstrong invited us to spend a weekend with them at Glenogil, the house of their friends Pat and Rosemary Ryan, near Avenel, Victoria. The two Davids walked, and talked, for a large part of the daylight hours of two days. This visit firmly established the friendship between the two Davids (Figure 1.5). They never agreed about much: DKL was by then a modal realist, DMA had no use at all for more than one possible world. They disagreed fundamentally about universals, and about properties. But they never stopped talking about philosophy. The Lewis–Armstrong correspondence is by far the longest, and richest, and most detailed of all of David Lewis's correspondences.

Figure 1.5

The Two Davids, Glenogil Station, Victoria. August 1976.

Tausende von E-Books und Hörbücher

Ihre Zahl wächst ständig und Sie haben eine Fixpreisgarantie.

Sie haben über uns geschrieben: