Real Possibilities and Modal Democracy

• Authors: Lipski P. , Placek T. , Wawer J.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

At the outset two concepts of possibility are discussed, and the authors argue that they are conflicting. On the one hand we have 'a real possibility', which assigns special status to some events, and on the other hand we have 'a democratic possibility' which allows for no privileged places, moments or occurrences. The authors assume that indeterminist events are relatively rare and combining this belief with the aforementioned distinction they argue that the two concepts of possibility refer to different aspects of the world, the real possibility refers to events in the world, the democratic possibility refers to space-temporal localization of events. This largely intuitive solution is analyzed for the ensuing consequences and expressed in a formal language that relies on the theory of branching time and branching space-time. It turns out that democratic models allowing for local indeterminism have particular and rather counter-intuitive properties.

Keywords

EN

'DEMOCRATIC POSSIBILITY'; 'REAL POSSIBILITY'; BRANCHING SPACE-TIME; BRANCHING TIME; INTUITIVE INSIGHTS

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Przegląd Filozoficzny. Nowa Seria
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 17
• Issue: 2(66)
• Pages: 169-191
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Lipski P.

author

Placek T.

author

Wawer J.

• P. Lipski, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Instytut Filozofii, ul. Grodzka 52, 31-044 Kraków, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

09PLAAAA06409