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person1966-2001

David Lewis

Disciplines:
logic
philosophy of mind
philosophy/philosophy of language
metaphysics

Summary

American philosopher who defended modal realism — the view that possible worlds are concrete, spatiotemporally isolated universes — and made foundational contributions to semantics, mind, and metaphysics.

Core Contribution

Developed modal realism: all possible worlds are equally real concrete universes, making counterfactuals and modal claims objectively true or false. Pioneered the analysis of causation via counterfactuals, developed functionalism in philosophy of mind, and created the logic of conditional sentences.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Defended the literal existence of infinitely many concrete possible worlds with the same conviction others reserve for the actual world — and considered the explanatory payoff worth the ontological cost.
  • Held Humean Supervenience: all facts about the world supervene on the distribution of local intrinsic qualities across spacetime points — no irreducible dispositions, laws, or causation.
  • Maintained that we ourselves exist only in one world but have counterparts — qualitatively similar beings — in other worlds, replacing de re modal claims with counterpart-theoretic paraphrase.

Notable Works & Achievements

Convention

Counterfactuals

On the Plurality of Worlds

Parts of Classes

Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology

Historical Influences

W. V. O. Quine Saul Kripke Rudolf Carnap

Intellectual Lineage

Analytic Philosophy Possible Worlds Semantics Humean Metaphysics

Contemporaries & Peers

Saul Kripke Hilary Putnam David Kaplan Frank Jackson

Minds Influenced

David Chalmers Frank Jackson John Hawthorne Ted Sider

Intellectual Posterity

Modal RealismCounterpart TheoryCounterfactual CausationHumean Supervenience

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