Counterfactuals 1st Edition by David Lewis (PDF)

Description

Counterfactuals is David Lewis’ forceful presentation of and sustained argument for a particular view about propositions which express contrary to fact conditionals, including his famous defense of realism about possible worlds.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐It provides a kind of advanced overview of modal realism, which is not really a logical system so much as a logical approach. These guys are forever getting it wrong. But, some would say, with their approach there’s not always much to say. It’s pared down to very fundamental assumptions, and the graphics, when they use them, are pretty sparse. But as such, this book provides an excellent guide to thoughts that otherwise would only be found in journals such as Synthese or Techne. I know some professional philosophers would object, saying that what Lewis says is completely original. But it must be said, he swallows much of the conventional methods entirely, at least as far as using them as a context goes.Readers may be entertained by Lewis’ occasional mention of flamingos and black and white swans to illustrate the subtle problems present in modal realism.I was deeply inspired by the book, including it as a reference in The Dimensional Philosopher’s Toolkit, my recently published book. However, as a warning, it is not really light reading. It just happens to have a very light approach to logic which is commonly more complex than it appears in this treatment. But unlike many other books, in this case the light treatment is combined with a rigorous understanding of how to not make mistakes. What may be unfortunate is that that may be the ultimate conclusion of the book, and that conclusion is really only reserved for advanced readers. But advanced readers modal realists are. So the only question is, does the book add anything to modal realism? I think it does, although I don’t give it five stars, because this is not (literally) a book of aphorisms, or, in fact, the quickest approach. But it provided serious hints for a perspective on philosophy that is utterly different.

⭐David Lewis is possibly the most famous and oft quoted philosopher of the 20th Century. He was best known for his work in metaphysics and ontology, and all of this work was heavily grounded in his theory of “alternate worlds”, The use of counterfactuals as a philosophic method for understanding truth were around long before Lewis. But Lewis organized the idea and gave it its most elaborate treatment by connecting it up to his notion of alternate worlds. This book is the core of his work in this area, his exploration of how, using the alternate worlds idea, counterfactuals reflect the truth of propositions. This is a very technical work. It would be helpful to have a good grounding in modern (that is 20th Century) analytic philosophy including familiarity with the terms of symbolic logic.

⭐good, but difficult to follow – still digesting the contents

⭐More than promised

⭐”Counterfactuals” is not for the kiddies, or even the “interested general reader”, if such a person exists. It is a book by an analytic philosopher, for analytic philosophers. Even among them, it will interest only the mandarins, the true devotees of contemporary analytical metaphysics and modal logic. But, for that select audience, this book is a treasure. It is a paradigm of philosophical analysis, lucid, concise, rigorous, and informed throughout by a luminous clarity of vision. The book concerns itself with a single problem of fundamental philosophical interest and importance: what do counterfactual conditionals mean, and when are they true? And such is the author’s consummate brilliance that he manages to solve this problem, in its essentials, in less than a hundred and fifty pages. In this review, I will not attempt to detail its contents, since Amazon already has information about that. I will simply give my own opinion of its significance. The reader who wants to know more should get a copy.”Counterfactuals” is that rarest of things: a truly original philosophical work that actually *succeeds* in its stated aim. To my knowledge, the only person, in the whole history of philosophy, to have developed an even remotely similar approach to the problem of counterfactuals is Robert Stalnaker, and Lewis’ work is I think indisputably superior, subsuming Stalnaker’s approach as a special (and doubtful) case. (Both works were, historically speaking, made yesterday–a mere generation ago.) If I am right in thinking that Lewis’ theory is substantially correct, then he would seem to be the first man in history to have achieved a philosophically adequate understanding of counterfactuals. This book, in my opinion, represents a fundamental breakthrough in logic and metaphysics, for which we owe its author a debt as great as that owed to Kripke, perhaps even comparable to that which mathematics and logic owe to the works of Frege.

⭐This book, while challenging, is an excellent entry point into Lewis’s thought. It assumes knowledge of symbolic logic, and an elementary understanding of symbolic modal logic. Otherwise it explains everything, and quite clearly. My only complaint is that the Kindle version contains more typos than one would expect. For example, in one sentence I found “counterfaetuals containing T, ‘you’, or demonstratives” — “counterfactuals” has been misspelled, and ‘I’ has been transformed into T. In a book on logic, precision is at a premium, and typos can hinder understanding.

⭐This is an excellently written book on modal logic. Serious readers, please. Just a warning. Hah.

⭐Counterfactuals è un testo fondamentale per approcciarsi con rigore e competenza al discorso metafisico, logico e semantico della filosofia contemporanea. Gli argomenti trattati sono prettamente di logica formale, con specifico interesse per i condizionali controfattuali, che sono enunciati della forma: “Se A non si fosse verificato, allora B non si sarebbe verificato”. Lewis propone una analisi semantica di questo tipo di enunciato, rivedendo la semantica dei mondi possibili in base ad una relazione a tre posti fra mondi. Dopo di ciò, offre al lettore alcuni usuali metateoremi (utili se si studia logica, altrimenti la prima parte potrà bastare al filosofo in generale).Come si diceva, è un testo che esercita un peso significativo sulla metafisica, perché sono rintracciabili in nuce le teorie sull’entità dei mondi possibili e sulle controparti; sulla logica, perché è un settore di ricerca preponderante per la logica filosofica; e sulla semantica, perché si espande la semantica di Kripke arricchendola con nuovi strumenti per trattare i controfattuali.Consiglio questo libro (a) al filosofo analitico che voglia irrobustire le sue conoscenze formali e (b) al logico, per il quale questo testo è una tappa obbligata per familiarizzare con lo studio di un classico e per andare al di là dei manuali a volte troppo semplicistici.Une oeuvre ardue.J’ai tenté de la lire deux fois mais c’est chaud…Peut-être qu’à la troisième ….I shall not discuss the content of this book, because I have not read too much of it yet (although it seems great). However, there are way too many typing errors. The text is very technical and uses mathematical language, so accuracy would be essential. From an e-book for that price I expect better quality!

Keywords

Free Download Counterfactuals 1st Edition in PDF format
Counterfactuals 1st Edition PDF Free Download
Download Counterfactuals 1st Edition 2013 PDF Free
Counterfactuals 1st Edition 2013 PDF Free Download
Download Counterfactuals 1st Edition PDF
Free Download Ebook Counterfactuals 1st Edition