green numbers give full details | back to texts | unexpand these ideas
| 18415 | The actual world is just the world you are in |
| Full Idea: Lewis equates knowing which world is actual with knowing which world one is in. | |||
| From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh - The Inessential Indexical 05.1 | |||
| A reaction: [This view is not, of course, Actualism, but an alternative treatment of actuality, within a multitude of possibilities]. |
| 16392 | A content is a property, and believing it is self-ascribing that property |
| Full Idea: For Lewis, a belief mode is analysed by saying that to believe a content (analysed as a property) is for the subject of thought to 'self-ascribe' that property. | |||
| From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 18.3 | |||
| A reaction: Lewis is weird. I would have thought you only self-ascribe the 'property' when you find yourself believing it. Lewis seems desperate to eliminate mental language. Belief can be a primitive concept without being primitive in ontology. |
| 18416 | Attitudes involve properties (not propositions), and belief is self-ascribing the properties |
| Full Idea: Lewis suggests that we take attitudes to have properties, rather than propositions, as contents. To stand in the belief relation to a property is to self-ascribe that property. | |||
| From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by Robert C. Solomon - Erotic Love as a Moral Virtue 05.1 | |||
| A reaction: This is the sort of convoluted suggestion that Lewis has to come up with, in pursuit of his project of a wholly consistent metaphysics. Examine Lewis's account of properties before you judge this proposal! Self-ascribing is joining a set! |
| 16390 | Lewis's popular centred worlds approach gives an attitude an index of world, subject and time |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers now prefer Lewis's centred worlds framework for indexicals …It is two-dimensional, saying an attitude only has a truth-value when evaluated with respect to a contextual index, containing a subject and time, as well as a world. | |||
| From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 18.2 | |||
| A reaction: [compressed; this is said to have largely ousted the older Kaplan-Perry view] You only begin to understand the possible worlds game when you see how many problems find proposed 'solutions' there. |
| 18418 | A theory of perspectival de se content gives truth conditions relative to an agent |
| Full Idea: Lewis's theory of a perspectival 'de se' content ...delivers truth conditions not absolutely, but only relative to a choice of agent/center. | |||
| From: report of David Lewis (Attitudes De Dicto and De Se [1979]) by Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh - The Inessential Indexical 05.7 | |||
| A reaction: The proposal rests on a theory of 'centred' possible worlds, specifying the viewpoint of some agent within the whole system. It relies on accepting the idea that indexicals are special, which Cappelen and Dever reject. |