Lewisian Themes The Philosophy of David K. Lewis

by Jackson, Frank; Priest, Graham

• ISBN13: 9780199274567
• ISBN10: 0199274568
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-10-14
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

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 inmetaphysics, 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, andtruth. 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 Schrodinger'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.

Table of Contents

Contributors	vii
Introduction	1	(3)
How Many Lives Has Schrodinger's Cat?	4	(20)
David Lewis
Counting the Holes	24	(5)
Roberto Casati
Achille C. Varzi
Adequacy Conditions for Counterpart Theory	29	(14)
M. J. Cresswell
Don't Forget About the Correspondence Theory of Truth	43	(6)
Marian David
Second-Order Predication and the Metaphysics of Properties	49	(19)
Andy Egan
Infinitesimal Chances and the Laws of Nature	68	(10)
Adam Elga
Desire Beyond Belief	78	(16)
Alan Hajek
Philip Pettit
Two Mistakes About Credence and Chance	94	(19)
Ned Hall
As Good As It Gets: Lewis on Truth in Fiction	113	(17)
Richard Hanley
Elusive Knowledge of Things in Themselves	130	(8)
Rae Langton
The Ballad of Ugly Dave	138	(2)
Jim Mackenzie
Modal Realism with Overlap	140	(16)
Kris McDaniel
David Lewis and Schrodinger's Cat	156	(17)
David Papineau
Distributional Properties	173	(8)
Josh Parsons
The Context of Essence	181	(15)
L. A. Paul
Wordly Indeterminacy: A Rough Guide	196	(14)
Gideon Rosen
Nicholas J. J. Smith
Quiddistic Knowledge	210	(21)
Jonathan Schaffer
Lewis on Intentionality	231	(14)
Robert Stalnaker
Transworld Similarity and Transworld Belief	245	(13)
Barry Taylor
Counterpossibles and Similarity	258	(19)
David Vander Laan
Index	277