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RE: Re: Dissertation Students
I've not come across the Cantorian objections to Lewis - my reading of objections to Lewis has so far been not nearly as wide as it needs to be! I'm thinking of something in the region of evaluating his success in reducing modality to possible worlds, but that's very broad and vague and needs clarification.
Your project on computers sounds fascinating; it's a shame that it wouldn't get you the credit it sounds like it deserves!
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> What's your subject? How much stress is it causing you?!
Tell me about it!
I was thinking of doing my project on computers which can do an infinite number
of steps in a finite amount of time (in particular whether such things could
exist given a fragment of our physics - i.e. are they physically possible?), and
then consider their implications in the philosophy of maths, mind and physics.
Thing is I've been thinking about this kind of thing for about a year and have
come up with lots of material. But about half of the work is technical stuff and
the other half philosophy, so if they only count the directly philosophical
applications then I expect to get about half the marks compared to the work I'd
have put in.
So I'm actually thinking of changing to another topic - Lewis' modal realism is
one possibility (no pun intended). In particular the paradoxes for Lewis' theory
using Cantor's theorem (people argue he has as many worlds as sets of worlds
which is impossible since there are always more sets of worlds than worlds.)
Have you covered that aspect of his theory? I was also thinking of doing
something in the philosophy of language, something on proper names, or on
quantifiers and anaphora.
All a bit of a mess really. Which aspects of Lewis' account are you going to
approach?
Andrew
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