|
|
|
|
|
|
he is right or wrong, but we need to deal with his world view in terms of possible worlds only if we must compare it with the ideas of Saint Bernard, who believed that in this world Divine Beauty was True while the Artistic one was mendacious. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Even in this case, however, I would speak of two theoretical models set up in order to explain the actual world. The entia rationis and the cultural constructs used in science and philosophy are not possible worlds. One can say that square roots, universalia, or modus ponens belong to a Third World à la Popper, but a Third World (if any), even if one takes it as a Platonic Ideal Realm, is not a "possible" one. It is as real and perhaps more real than the empirical one. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Euclidean geometry does not portray a possible world. It is an abstract portrait of the actual one. It can become the portrait of a possible world only if we take it as the portrait of Abbott's Flatland. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Possible worlds are cultural constructs but not every cultural construct is a possible world. For instance, in trying out a scientific hypothesisin the sense of Peirce's abductionswe figure out possible Laws that, if they held, could explain many inexplicable phenomena. But these adventures of our mind have as their sole aim to prove that the "imagined" Law also holds in the "real" worldor in the world we construct as the real one. Possibility is a means, not an end in itself. We explore the plurality of possibilia to find a suitable model for realia. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Likewise, I do not think that metaphors outline possible worlds (as is assumed, for instance, by Levin 1979:124ff). In its simplest form, a metaphor is a shortened simile: "Tom is a lion" means that Tom, under a certain description, has some of the properties of a lion (say, force and courage). Naturally, if one takes this metaphor literally there is a case of infelicitous communication or at least of semantic inconsistency, since it is impossiblein the actual worldto be at the same time human and beast. But if we take it as a figure of speech and interpret it consequently, then it tells something that cannot be challenged from the point of view of our world knowledge: it tells that in the actual world Tom has (allegedly) these properties. This metaphor, once disambiguated, can appear as a false statement about the actual world (someone can deny that Tom is truly courageous) but not as a true statement about a possible world. If, on the contrary, I say that in Homer's world Achilles is a lion, I tell something true in Homer's world, while leaving unprejudiced whether this is true or not in the world of historical, if any, experience. Even the most obscure metaphor does not outline an alternative world: it simply obscurely suggests that one should see cer- |
|
|
|
|
|