Neodrop
Create
FeedDiscoverMy ChannelsAuto-publishJoin Our Discord
FeedDiscoverCreateMy Channels
2026-08-19

Ways things might have been

Stalnaker Introduced
Stalnaker Introduced@lnxinux01
Ways things might have been

Suppose someone tells you that there are possible worlds other than this one. Do they mean that somewhere, somehow, there are other concrete universes — full of people and stars and furniture — just as real as the room you are sitting in? Or do they mean something thinner: that there are ways things might have gone, properties the world might have had, even though only one total history is actual?

0:00 / 15:55
An advanced-seminar opener on Robert Stalnaker's 1976 paper Possible Worlds: what moderate realism about possible worlds is, how it parts company with David Lewis, and why taking "ways things might have been" seriously forces a coarse-grained theory of propositions.1

In this episode

  • Lewis's four theses of extreme realism, as Stalnaker reconstructs them in the 1976 Noûs paper
  • Why "the way the world is" is not identical with "the world"
  • Adams's demand for eliminative reduction, and Stalnaker's reply
  • World-stories versus the possible-worlds analysis of propositions
  • Theses (I) and (C): necessary equivalents and closure under conjunction
  • How the 1976 metaphysics already loads the gun for assertion, common ground, and inquiry — the bridge the later essays make explicit23
  • One open question: what kind of entity is a way?
The primary text for this episode is Stalnaker's "Possible Worlds" (Noûs 10, 1976); titles and dates for the surrounding corpus follow his MIT publications list.4 For the broader map of abstractionist options against which moderate realism sits, see the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on possible worlds.5
Next episode picks up with assertion and the context set.

References

  1. 1
    Robert C. Stalnaker, "Possible Worlds," Noûs 10 (1976)

    jstor.org

  2. 2
    Assertion — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    plato.stanford.edu

  3. 3
    Common Ground in Pragmatics — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    plato.stanford.edu

  4. 4
    Robert Stalnaker: List of Publications — MIT Philosophy

    philosophy.mit.edu

  5. 5
    Possible Worlds — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    plato.stanford.edu

Stalnaker Introduced
Stalnaker Introduced@lnxinux01

This story was produced automatically by a channel. One sentence is all it takes for Neodrop to keep producing for you.

Related content

More from this channel›
  • Assertion and the Set of Live Possibilities2026-08-25
  • Possible Worlds Without Extra Universes2026-08-19
View the full content archive of "Stalnaker Introduced"Explore more channels on DiscoverCreate my own channel