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The Nature of Possibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

D.M. Armstrong
D.M. Armstrong*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney, N.S.W.Australia2006
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Extract

I want to defend a Combinatorialtheory of possibility. Such a view traces the very idea of possibility to the idea of the combinations – all the combinations which respect a certain simple form – of given, actual, elements. Combination is to be understood widely enough to cover the notions of expansion and contraction. (My central metaphysical hypothesis is that all there is is the world of space and time. It is this world which is to supply the actual elements for the totality of combinations. So what is proposed is a Naturalistic form of a combinatorial theory.)

The combinatorial idea is not new, of course. Wittgenstein gave a classical exposition of it in the Tractatus. Perhaps its charter is 3.4: ‘A proposition determines a place in logical space. The existence of this logical place is guaranteed by the mere existence of the constituents’ (my italics). There is a small additional combinatorial literature. I myself was converted to a combinatorial view by Brian Skyrms’ brief but fascinating article ‘Tractarian Nominalism.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 575 - 594
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1986

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References

1 Wittgenstein, L. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. Pears, D. and McGuiness, B.F. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1922)Google Scholar

2 Skyrms, B. ‘Tractarian Nominalism,’ Philsophical Studies 40 (1981) 199–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See Armstrong, D.M. A Theory of Universals, Vol. II of Universals and Scientific Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1978), chapter 14.Google Scholar

4 Lewis, David On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell 1986)Google Scholar

5 See Armstrong, D. M. Nominalism and Realism, Vol. I of Universals and Scientific Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1978), chapter 9.Google Scholar

6 Lycan, W.G. ‘The Trouble with Possible Worlds’ in Loux, M.J. ed. The Possible and the Actual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1979), 274–316,Google Scholar 307n.

7 Armstrong, A Theory of Universals, chapter 15,Google Scholar section I

8 What is the basis of this impossibility? I think it is reasonable to say that this mereological truth is purely analytic. We see that it holds if we understand what it means to say that something is a proper part of a whole.

9 See Armstrong, D.M. and Malcolm, Norman Consciousness and Causality (Oxford: Blackwell 1984) 180–1Google Scholar