david lewis's metaphysics.docx

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David Lewis's MetaphysicsFirst published Tue Jan 5, 2010

David Lewis produced a body of philosophical writing that, in four books and scoresof articles, spanned every major philosophical area, with perhaps the greatest

concentration in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and

philosophy of mind. Despite this astonishing variety, a newcomer to Lewis's

philosophy would be best advised to begin with his metaphysics (especially: 1986a,

1986e, 1999). There are several reasons. First, the majority of Lewis's work either

concerns, or substantially overlaps, topics in metaphysics. Second, the metaphysical

positions Lewis stakes out are strikingly original and powerfully argued. Third, there is

a coherence and systematicity to this work that makes it a particularly appropriate

object for study, in that one sees trademark Lewisian philosophical maneuvers clearlyon display. (Indeed, if one wished to learn how to do philosophy in a Lewisian style,

the most efficient way to do so would be to study his work in metaphysics.) Finally,

and perhaps most interestingly, Lewis's metaphysics exerted a profound regulating

influence on the rest of his philosophy: if some otherwise attractive position on some

philosophical problem could not be made to square with his overall metaphysical

outlook, then it would have to be abandoned.

I should forestall one possible misunderstanding. You might think that, given what I've

just said, the way Lewis would recommend doing philosophy is as follows: First you

figure out what your basic metaphysical commitments should be; then you turn yourattention to various broad but non-foundational philosophical subject matters (personal

identity, mental content, the nature of knowledge, theory of value, etc.), and work out

the consequences in each of these arenas of your fundamental metaphysical posits.

Nothing could be further from Lewis's preferred methodology. (Well, maybe relying

on divine revelation would be further.) What he in fact recommends is a holistic

approach: we start with the total body of claims we are inclined to believewhether

on the basis of common sense (an oft-invoked category, for Lewis) or of science

and try our best tosystematizeit in accordance with standards of theoretical goodness

that are themselves endorsed by common sense and/or science (and so are themselves,

to some extent, also up for grabs). A substantial portion of Lewis's overall body ofphilosophical work can thus be seen as an extendedand breathtakingly ambitious

attempt at achieving total reflective equilibrium. Here is an especially succinct

description of this approach:

One comes to philosophy already endowed with a stock of opinions. It is not the

business of philosophy either to undermine or to justify these preexisting opinions, to

any great extent, but only to try to discover ways of expanding them into an orderly

system. (1973b, p. 88)

Still, while Lewis's method of philosophical inquiry is certainly not bottom-up, in

my opinion it is best to present the resultsof that inquiry in a bottom-up fashion. That

is what this essay, and ones to follow, will attempt to do. I will divide the terrain into


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Once the menu of well-worked-out theories is before us, philosophy is a matter of

opinion. Is that to say that there is no truth to be had? Or that the truth is of our own

making, and different ones of us can make it differently? Not at all! If you say flatly

that there is no god, and I say that there are countless gods but none of them are our

worldmates, then it may be that neither of us is making any mistake of method. We

may each be bringing our opinions to equilibrium in the most careful possible way,

taking account of all the arguments, distinctions, and counterexamples. But one of us,

at least, is making a mistake of fact. Which one is wrong depends on what there is.

(Lewis 1983a, p. xi)

We can begin to get a handle on Lewis's audacious and comprehensive answers to our

two overarching questions by distinguishing three components to his metaphysical

program:

First, he offers an account of what thefundamental ontological structureof the world

is. Is, andmustbealthough as we'll see, that qualification turns out to be in a certain

sense trivial. This account of fundamental ontology of course presupposes that the

word fundamentalmeanssomething, and in particular manages to cleanly distinguish

a certain central core of one's ontological commitments from the rest. Suppose these

commitments take the form of views about what entities (or particulars) there are,

and what properties and relations they stand in. Then we can distinguish two

questions. Are some entities more fundamental than otherswith, perhaps, an elite

group of entities being the most fundamental? Are some properties/relations more

fundamental than othersagain, with, perhaps, an elite group being the most

fundamental? You might find a yes answer to both questions attractive. (E.g., chairsexist, but they are not fundamental-level entitiesthough perhaps quarks are.

Likewise, some chairs have the property of being made of oak; but this is not a

fundamental-level propertythough perhaps the property of having such-and-such

electric charge is.) As for Lewis's own views, with respect to the second question they

are fairly unambiguous: He is quite clear that a proper ontology must include not just

particulars but also properties and relations (see especially 1983b); he is equally clear

that it is a perfectly objective and determinate matter which of these

properties/relations are more fundamental (or, in his terminology, more natural) than

others (ibid.); he is officially agnostic about whether some properties/relationsare mostfundamental, orperfectlynatural (1986f). His views on the first question are,

to my eyes at least, more difficult to discernbut for reasons that, in the final analysis,

probably do not matter. See the

Supplement onFundamental Entities

What's more, to a very great extent he takes it that the route to a proper theory of

fundamental ontology is by way of a prioriphilosophical inquiry. (An important

qualification will be noted shortly.)

Second, he offers an account of modality, his famous realismabout possible worlds.

Lewis, like many philosophers, takes talk of possibility and necessity to be bestexplicated as disguised quantification over possible worlds (and possible inhabitants

thereof), and he was endlessly ingenious at showing how to use the resources provided
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by a theory of possibilia to produce analyses of a host of modal locutions. But his

realism about possible worlds consists in much more than inclusion of such entities

into his ontology; indeed, it would probably be better to call Lewis a reductionist

about modalityreductionist in a way that distinguishes him from virtually every

other philosopher of modality. For a typical believer in possible worlds will, if asked

to explain what they are, give an account that uses modal notions at some crucial

point. Perhaps she will say that possible worlds are maximal consistentsets of

sentences (in some appropriate language); or perhaps she will say that they are certain

kinds of maximal properties that reality as a whole could haveinstantiated. Lewis says

no such thing: he offers a characterization of possible worldsand thus of modality

generallyin explicitly non-modal terms. This complete subordination of the modal to

the non-modal gives his philosophy of modality a quite radical character, and also

sheds light on some of his seemingly independent views about the modalities involved

in such concepts as causation, law of nature, and chance. (For example, Lewis rejectsphilosophical accounts of laws of nature that rely on any primitive modal notions.)

Third, Lewis offers an account of how facts about everything else reduceto the sorts

of facts laid out in his accounts of fundamental ontology and modality. (Note that

given the remarks in the last paragraph, these reductions ultimately rest on facts about

fundamental ontology alone; no unanalyzed modal notions are involved in them.)

Better: he offers an assortment of distinctive approaches for constructing such

reductions, of which there are many examples but no single, canonical exposition. At

this point I wish to make just three observations about these strategies. First, they can

be seen to be directed at providing answers to a distinctively metaphysical kind ofquestion, of the form, What is it for such-and-such a fact to obtain? Examples will

pin down the idea:

Question: What is it for an object to persist through time? Lewis's answer: It is

for that object to be constituted by three-dimensional, instantaneous time-slices

that exist at different times. (Lewis 1988)

Question: What is it for an object to have a certain property essentially? Lewis's

answer: It is for every one of that object's counterparts in other possible worlds

to have that property. (Lewis 1968) Question: What is an event? Lewis's answer: It is a certain kind of property of

spacetime regions. (Lewis 1986d)

Question: What is it for one event to be a cause of another? Lewis's

(preliminary) answer: It is for the second event to counterfactually depend on

the first, in the sense that had the first not occurred, the second would not

have.[1](Lewis 1973a, 1986b)

Question: What is an explanation of some event? Lewis's answer: It is a

quantity of information about that event's causes. (Lewis 1986c)

And so on. It is this kind of questionalbeit not always phrased in this way, and

accompanied by definite views about what constitutes a philosophically appropriate
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answerthat animate what we might call Lewis's applied metaphysics: the

application of his basic positions in ontology and modality to a range of perennial

metaphysical topics. Note that the reductionist character of his approach comes out

when we pursue the obvious follow-up questions: For example, what is it for one event

to counterfactually depend on another? Roughly, it is for the closest possible world in

which the second does not occur to be a world in which the first does not occur. What

is it for one world to be closer to actuality than another? We'll skip the answer for

nowbut rest assured that it and the answers to subsequent follow-up questions are

designed to hang together in such a way as to collectively display how facts about

what causes what ultimately reduce to facts about fundamental ontology. And so it

goes, for personal identity, free will, the mind, knowledge, ethics, laws of nature, you

name it.

The second observation is that it remains far from clear whether we can dispense with

the notion of reduce to (or determined by, fixed by, etc.) in favor of some

philosophically more sanitized alternative; see the

Supplement onReduction

The third observation I wish to make at this point is that Lewis is strongly motivated

by a desire for theoretical economyboth with respect to ontology and with respect to

ideology. His quest for ontological economy shows up in the austerity of the kindsof

fundamental entities he admits into his ontology (he neither shows, nor cares to show,

any economy with respect to theirnumber). His quest for ideological economy shows

up in several places, but perhaps most notably in his utter rejection of anyunanalyzedmodal notions, andsomething that hasn't been mentioned yetin his attempted

reduction of set theory to mereology and plural quantification. More on this in the

(forthcoming) article on his applied metaphysics, as well as other examples of his

focus on ideological parsimony at work.

Let's take a somewhat closer look, now, at Lewis's account of fundamental ontology.

2. Fundamental ontology: A simplified versionIt will be useful to start with a view that is almost Lewis'salmost, but not quite, as it

is more opinionated than he would be comfortable with. Stating the view takes but afew lines; providing the needed commentary will take longer. Thus, Almost-Lewis

says the following:

The onlyfundamental entitiesthat areparticularsare spacetime points.

What these particulars are like is given by what perfectly natural monadic properties

they instantiate, and what perfectly natural relations they stand in to one another.

And that's it. That is, the facts about what fundamental particulars there are, and what

perfectly natural properties and relations they instantiate, determine all other facts.

Yes, even modal facts, as the (forthcoming) companion article explains. Almost-Lewis(and Lewis) believes, of course, in otherparticulars besides spacetime points; it's just

that these particulars are not fundamental: what it is for them to exist is to be
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explained, somehow, in terms of facts about the fundamental entities. (More on this, in

the forthcoming companion article on Lewis's applied metaphysics; also, see the

Supplement onFundamental Entities

for some qualifications about Lewis's position.)

Notice one consequence: If the facts about what fundamental particulars there are, and

what perfectly natural properties and relations they instantiate, determine allother

facts, then there is no reason to suppose that composite particularsparticulars that

have other particulars as proper partsever instantiate perfectly natural monadic

properties. (Of course, they can perfectly well instantiate the very-but-not-perfectly

natural property of havingpartsthat instantiate such-and-such a perfectly

natural relation.) Thus, if, for example, my laptop has a mass of 3 kg, that is so only in

a slightly derivative sense: the laptop is composed of parts whose masses add up to 3

kg.

As noted, the position of Almost-Lewis is not that of Lewis, and shortly we will need

to review the key respect in which, by Lewis's lights, it overreaches. But first we need

to elaborate and clarify the content of Almost-Lewis's position, by means of some

commentary.

Four questions demand attention: What are perfectly natural properties and

relations? What does it come to to say that the fundamental particulars

arespacetimepoints? What does it come to to say that they are spacetimepoints?

Finally, what is the relationship between the fundamental ontology posited by Almost-

Lewis and Lewis's own celebrated thesis of Humean Supervenience? Let's considerthese topics in turn.

3. Perfectly natural properties and relationsRemember that laying out the foundations of one's ontology requires two things: to say

what, fundamentally, there is; and to say what it is like,presumably by stating

somefacts aboutthe fundamental entities. But not just any facts matter. For example,

it may be true of some of the fundamental entities that they coexist with at least one

pig; but saying so does nothing to help articulate thefundamental structureof reality.

To do that, Lewis thinks, one needs a distinctionamong the properties and relations:some are special, in that it is theirpattern of instantiation among the fundamental

entities that constitutes the fundamental structure of realitythe joints along which

nature is to be ultimately carved. These special properties and relations are the

perfectly natural ones.

(There are a variety of other uses to which Lewis puts the notion of natural

properties, some of which show that what he needs is a distinction that admits of

gradations, with theperfectlynatural properties at one extreme. Many of these

additional uses will be mentioned in the (forthcoming) article on his applied

metaphysics; but see the

Supplement onThe Natural/Non-natural Distinction
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for an overview.)

It is not enough merely to appeal to such a distinction; for metaphysics to do its job

properly, it must also provide an account. Now, one way to proceed would be to

provide a theory of what properties and relations are, in which it is stipulated that allsuch things are to count as perfectly natural. On such an approach, while there may

well be a property corresponding to the predicate has mass 5 kg (for example), there

will almost certainly be no property corresponding to the predicate is green (let

alone that familiar gerrymander, is grue). Lewis favors a different approach. Given

his commitment to set theory, he alreadybelieves in things that, by his lights, deserve

to be called the property of being green, and indeed the property of being grue: these

are merely certainsetssets of actual and possible objects. (See the section on Lewis'

modal metaphysics in the entry onDavid Lewis, and the supplement onThe

Natural/Non-natural Distinction.) The question for him, then, is how

to distinguish among these sets those that are perfectly natural. Here I will present

Almost-Lewis as being, almost like Lewis, agnostic as between four broad

alternatives. (Almost, because Lewis eventually decided that the first alternative,

according to which natural properties and relations are Aristotelian universals, is

unworkable; see his 1986f for the reasons.)

One could adopt a theory of universalsof the kind developed by David

Armstrong (1978a,1978b): we could call a property [viz., set of actual and

possible objects]perfectly natural if its members are all and only those things

that share some one universal. (1999 p. 13) One could treat natural as aprimitivepredicate of sets of actual and possible

objects: a Nominalist could take it as a primitive fact that some classes of

things are perfectly natural properties; others are less-than-perfectly natural to

various degrees; and most are not at all natural. Such a Nominalist uses

natural as a primitive predicate, and offers no analysis of what he means in

predicating it of classes. (1999, p. 14)[2]

One could define natural in terms of a suitably complex, and primitive, notion

ofresemblance: Alternatively, a Nominalist in pursuit of adequacy might

prefer to rest with primitive objective resemblance among things. Then hecould undertake to define natural properties in terms of the mutual resemblance

of their members and the failure of resemblance between their members and

their non-members. (1999, p. 14)

One could adopt an ontology of tropesroughly, property-instances, entities

that occupy a sort of ontological halfway house between particulars and

properties. (See Lewis 1986f, Williams 1953, Campbell 1990.)

Returning now to Almost-Lewis's fundamental ontology, the options seem to be these:

It might be that a spacetime point (or sequence of points) instantiates a perfectly

natural property (respectively, relation) by instantiating a universal, in the sense ofArmstrong. It might be that it has it by having as one part a certain kind of trope, in

roughly the sense of Williams. (Whence we must amend slightly, and take
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these tropesto be the fundamental entities.) It might be that it has it by belonging to a

special sort of set of (actual and merely possible) spacetime pointsspecial either on

account of the resemblances that unite its members and distinguish them from non-

members, or on account of simply being perfectly natural. Regardless of which one

chooses, Lewis thinks, one's theory of natural properties and relations ought to respect

four philosophically-motivated constraints:

First, an adequate theory should be minimal, in the sense that it posits just enough

perfectly natural properties and relations for their distribution among the fundamental

particulars to fully and determinately fix the nature of all of reality: The guiding idea,

roughly, is that the world's universals should comprise a minimal basis for

characterizing the world completely. Universals that do not contribute at all to this end

are unwelcome, and so are universals that contribute only redundantly. (1999, p. 12)

It is clear from the surrounding text that Lewis takes this constraint to govern the

various alternatives to a universals account of naturalness.[3]

Second, perfectly natural properties and relations are, Lewis thinks, non-modal. What,

exactly, this means will need to come in for more discussion in the (forthcoming)

companion article on Lewis's applied metaphysics, where we discuss his views about

laws of nature and related nomological concepts. For the moment, we can take it to

mean roughly this (though trouble for this characterization quickly arises): the

instantiation of a perfectly natural property by one (fundamental) particular, or of a

relation by several, places absolutely no constraints of a logical or metaphysical kind

on the instantiation of any other perfectly natural property or relation by that or anyother particular or particulars.

Third, they are intrinsicto the particulars that instantiate themwhich, all too

roughly, means that they characterize what those particulars are like, independently of

what any other distinct particular is like. More: The intrinsic nature of any particular is

exhausted by what perfectly natural properties it instantiates. [4]This assumption also

allows a theory of natural properties and relations to yield, in a fairly simple way, a

definition of perfect duplicate applicable to any possible objects xandy(not

necessarily inhabiting the same possible world):xandyare perfect duplicates iff they

share exactly the same perfectly natural properties.

[5]

A definition of intrinsicfollows: a propertyPis intrinsic iff any two duplicatesxandy(taken from any

possible worlds) either both havePor both fail to haveP. Of course, what we really

have here is a tight circle that puts on display how the expressions intrinsic, perfect

duplicate, and perfectly natural can be interdefined, with the help of the modal

notion of metaphysical possibility. (See Lewis 1983c and Langton & Lewis 1998 for

discussion of various strategies for breaking out of this circle.)

The fourth constraint is purely negative: it is that it should be left to the empirical

sciences to fill in the details about whichperfectly natural monadic propertiesthere are

(at least, in actuality:philosophy might teach us, or at least give us some reason tobelieve, that there are, in other possible worlds, so-called alien properties, perfectly

natural properties not instantiated in the actual world). Not just any empirical science
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will do: given, in particular, the first of the four theses, it is really the job of

fundamental physics to fill in these details. The special sciences get no say.

What about perfectly natural relations? Here matters are less clear. Lewis certainly

thinks that spatiotemporal relations are perfectly natural; what is less obvious iswhether, by his lights, physics could rationally lead us to rejectthis claim. For now I

will simplify, and have Almost-Lewis add afifthconstraintone that is in tension at

least with the spirit of the fourth, and that the real Lewis certainly rejects. It is this: not

only are spatiotemporal relations perfectly natural, they are the onlyperfectly natural

relations. (The onlypossibleonesthough remember that given Lewis's reductionism

about modality, that is an idle addition.)

The picture that emerges is this: Reality consists of a multitude of spacetime points.

Each of these stands in spatiotemporal relations to some others (though not

to allothers: see the companion article on Lewis's theory of modality). Eachinstantiates various perfectly natural, non-modal monadic properties. That is all there

is; anything putatively extrafacts about laws of nature, or about persisting macro-

objects, or about causation, or about mentality, or about ethics, or about sets, etc.

must somehow reduce to that stuff. For Almost-Lewis, this picture captures a

fundamental truth about the nature of existence. It is roughly right that it is also

anecessarytrutha status that would seem to fall out automatically, given Lewis's

reductionist account of modality. (We will see, in the companion article, reasons for

thinking that he is better off simply dismissingany questions about the modal status of

his theses about fundamental ontology.) The only unfinishedphilosophicalbusiness isto work out the right theory of natural properties and relations, and to work out the

details of the reduction for particular cases.

4. Spatiotemporal relations and spacetime pointsThe foregoing Almost-Lewisian thesis about spatiotemporal relations is too strong to

be tenable: we now have reasonably good reasons, drawn from quantum physics, for

holding that even in the actual world, there are perfectly natural relations other than

the purely spatiotemporal ones. (Roughly: the relationswhatever exactly they

amount tocoded up in the quantum mechanical wave-function.) Two points in itsdefense are, however, worth brief mention: First, seemingly obvious

counterexamplesinvolving such basic physical relations as being more massive

thanin fact aren't counterexamples, since Lewis can deny that they are genuinely

fundamental orperfectlynatural, on the basis that facts about their obtaining reduce to

facts about the distribution of monadic perfectly natural properties. (Still, they will

certainly turn out to be verynatural.) Second, if we could at least maintain, as

a contingent thesis, that the only perfectly natural relations are spatiotemporal ones,

then we could plausibly settle an unresolved and deeply vexed question about the

content of physicalism (the doctrine, to put it rather too crudely, that all there is to the

actual world is physical stuff), as explained in the

Supplement on Physicalism.
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At any rate, the thesis that spatiotemporal relations are at least among the perfectly

natural relations allows us to clarify and simplify Almost-Lewis's position.

Specifically, we can say that all that it comes to to say that the fundamental entities

arespacetimepoints is that they stand in perfectly natural spatiotemporal relations to

one another. For more, see the

Supplement on Spacetime Points.

To say that they are spacetimepoints, finally, is to say that they have no proper parts.

One upshot is that my original statement of Almost-Lewis's ontology needs an

amendment: for it was misleading to say that according to him, the fundamental

particulars arespacetimepoints. That's true, but it wrongly suggests that he is making

a choice of one fundamental kindof particular, distinguished from other possible

choices by the essential nature of its members. Not so. It is more accurate to describe

his fundamental ontology thus:

There are particulars.

They are, or are wholly composed of,simplesparticulars have no other

particulars as proper parts.

These simples have various perfectly natural monadic properties.

They stand in various spatiotemporal relations to one another.

And that is all.

5. Humean SupervenienceAlmost-Lewis's theses about what fundamental ontology comprises, and how all other

facts reduce to facts about it, bears a very close relationship to Lewis's celebrated

thesis of Humean Supervenience (hereafter: HS). But they are not the same, and the

differences are worth keeping track of. Here is a typical statement of HS (slightly

stronger, as we'll see, than the version Lewis officially endorses): No two possible

worlds differ with respect to what is true at them, without differing with respect to the

geometrical arrangement of their spacetime points, or with respect to which perfectly

natural properties are instantiated at those points.[6]

(Note that so stated, HS isautomatically metaphysically necessary.) Thus, HS is asupervenienceclaim, logically

weaker than Almost-Lewis's claim of reduction. It is also a claim thatfor some good

reasons and some bad reasonsLewis accepts only in a weaker form that is

metaphysically contingent. More significantly, it is no part of HS that facts about

possible worlds themselves reduce to anything else; whereas both Almost-Lewis and

Lewis are explicit in their commitment to this further claim. Having said all this, it will

be worth remembering in what follows that Almost-Lewis's position (which,

remember, incorporates Lewis's modal realism) entailsHS. So, any doubts about HS

will carry over to Almost-Lewis's fundamental ontology.

6. Lewis v. Almost-Lewis
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Let's consider now the most salient ways in which Lewis's own positions about

fundamental ontology diverge from those of Almost-Lewis.

First, Lewis takes the lessons quantum physics teaches seriously enough to withhold

endorsement of Almost-Lewis's fifth thesis, that the only perfectly natural relations arespatiotemporal relations.

Second, Lewis is agnostic as to whether, in addition to spacetime points, there might

be (in this, or other possible worlds) fundamental entities that are occupantsof such

points. But agnosticism on this score is probably a bad idea: the proposed possibility is

not clearly intelligible, nor it is clear what its motivation could be. For more, see the

Supplement on Spacetime Points.

Third, on a plausible story about what non-fundamental entities there are, it will turn

out that on Almost-Lewis's view, everything that exists is composed of simples (parts,

that themselves have no proper parts). Lewis is also agnostic on this score: he takes it

to be at least an epistemic possibility that there is gunk: something, every proper part

of which itself has a proper part (see for example Lewis 1991). Lewis says relatively

little either about the status of this possibility (in particular, is it more than merely

epistemic?), or about its potential ramifications for his various positions in

metaphysics. To keep things simple, I will discount it for the remainder of this main

essay.

Fourth, Lewis holds that his thesis of Humean Supervenience is, at best,

only contingentlytrue. Of course, given that he recognizes the (metaphysical)

possibility of perfectly natural, non-spatiotemporal relations, heshouldtreat HS as at

best contingent. But he advances reasons for doing so of a quite different sort. They

are not particularly good reasons, and so we will pass them by; but see the

Supplement on the Contingency of Humean Supervenience

for discussion.

7. Some criticismsWhat, finally, should we make of Lewis's conception of fundamental ontology? A

complicated question; I will limit discussion to just two important worries. Let's beginby noting the obvious influence of a certain scientifically-informed conception of the

world in shaping Lewis's picture of reality. Lewis himself is quite explicit about this

influence:

The picture is inspired by classical physics. Humean Supervenience doesn't actually

say that physics is right about what local qualities there are, but that's the case to keep

in mind. But if we keep physics in mind, we'd better remember that physics isn't really

classical. The point of defending Humean Supervenience is not to support

reactionary physics, but rather to resist philosophical arguments that there are more

things in heaven and earth than physics has dreamt of. (1994, p. 474)But there is a less acknowledged influence of first-order predicate logican influence

that is not entirely salutary. It is undoubtedly tempting, for philosophers steeped in the
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use of first-order logic as a clarifying tool, to assume that the proper representation of

the ultimate structure of reality must be by means of some (interpreted) first-order

languagea language whose variouspredicatescould be taken to express the

variousfundamental properties and relationsthat characterize reality at its most basic

level. But if we look to physics insteadas we surely ought towe find that the basic

representational tools are variables, that correspond tophysical magnitudes.Taking

seriously the picture of fundamental ontology suggested by these representations turns

out to matter quite a bit: in particular, there are reasons to think that none of the first

three theses about natural properties and relationsthat they are minimal, non-modal,

and intrinsicis tenable without some modification. This issuewhich we will

mostly pass over in what follows, except where it mattersis explored in more detail

in the

Supplement on Physical Magnitudes.

The second significant source of concern about Lewis's conception of fundamental

ontology is the roleor rather lack thereofthat modalnotions have in it. This

concern has two aspects. First, one might hold that some, at least, of the fundamental

properties and relations that characterize reality have modal aspects that are

ontologically basic. Consider mass: one might hold that it is metaphysically impossible

for there to be a world containing just two massive particles, accelerating away from

each otherand that this impossibility somehow flows from the nature of mass itself.

We will take up this issue in more detail in the companion article on Lewis's applied

metaphysics.

Second, one might hold that it is one thing to state a thesis concerning what the

fundamental structure of reality in facthappens to be; but that it is another, separate

matter to state how reality couldbe. Indeed, most metaphysicians, I suspect, take it to

be just blindingly obvious that these are conceptually distinct tasks. Granted that one's

views on what there is, and what it is like, will have ramifications for one's views on

what there couldbe and what it couldbe like (most obviously, because things couldbe

the way they are; but there may be more interesting and subtle connections as well);

still, the project of laying out the former views does not automaticallycomplete the

project of laying out the latter.

Of course there is a sense in which Lewis agrees: he takes it as obvious, after all, that

he must supply an account of modality. But the strikingly reductionist character of that

account shows that such agreement as there is is mighty thin. The next article

(forthcoming) will help clarify this quite radical aspect to Lewis's metaphysics.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lewis-metaphysics/physical-magnitudes.htmlhttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lewis-metaphysics/physical-magnitudes.htmlhttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lewis-metaphysics/physical-magnitudes.html

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