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Full Idea
A 'modal realist' believes that there are many concrete worlds, while the 'actualist' believes in only one concrete world, the actual world. The 'ersatzist' is an actualist who takes nonactual possible worlds and their contents to be abstracta.
Gist of Idea
'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds
Source
L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro)
Book Ref
'Metaphysics (Philosophical Perspectives 20)', ed/tr. Hawthorne,John [Blackwell 2006], p.333
A Reaction
My view is something like that modal realism is wrong, and actualism is right, and possible worlds (if they really are that useful) are convenient abstract fictions, constructed (if we have any sense) out of the real possibilities in the actual world.
| 14190 | Deep essentialist objects have intrinsic properties that fix their nature; the shallow version makes it contextual [Paul,LA] |
| 14191 | Deep essentialists say essences constrain how things could change; modal profiles fix natures [Paul,LA] |
| 14192 | Essentialism must deal with charges of arbitrariness, and failure to reduce de re modality [Paul,LA] |
| 14189 | 'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds [Paul,LA] |
| 14193 | 'Substance theorists' take modal properties as primitive, without structure, just falling under a sortal [Paul,LA] |
| 14195 | If an object's sort determines its properties, we need to ask what determines its sort [Paul,LA] |
| 14196 | Substance essentialism says an object is multiple, as falling under various different sortals [Paul,LA] |
| 14197 | An object's modal properties don't determine its possibilities [Paul,LA] |
| 14198 | Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would allow things with incompatible properties [Paul,LA] |