Alexander Roberts has published an interesting new paper in Mind, which argues for the claim that "those who believe in physical necessity should not harbour any scepticism towards merely metaphysical possibilities." How he reaches this result is quite complex, and I'll leave it to the full paper to provide an explanation; however, "the result requires those who believe in physical necessity to recognize merely metaphysical possibilities which are forbidden by our physical laws." The key line of argument in the paper revolves around the notion of lawless worlds (i.e. worlds in which no laws of nature, whether ours or any others, obtain). Roberts argues that such worlds are accessible from all other possible worlds by a finite chain of physical possibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment