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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Modal realism (Lewis) and materialism are logically independent doctrines: one can be a materialist nominalist who rejects possible worlds entirely.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Materialists need some account of possibility; modal realism provides the most rigorous one. Alternatives face serious explanatory costs.
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    • 2.Rejecting possible worlds while maintaining materialist commitments creates tensions: how do counterfactuals get truth-conditions non-metaphysically?
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    • 3.Lewis's modal realism follows naturally from taking modality seriously within a physicalist framework, making separation artificial.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Materialism commits only to physical entities; modal realism adds abstract possible worlds, an ontologically distinct category.
      ?

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    • 2.Nominalists successfully defend materialism without possible worlds by treating modal claims as useful fictions or linguistic conventions.
      ?

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    • 3.Modal realism and materialism solve different problems: one addresses modality, the other addresses composition—logically separable.
      ?

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