(April 27, 2017 at 1:29 pm)Grandizer Wrote:(April 27, 2017 at 1:06 pm)SteveII Wrote: The hangup you have is that a possible world does not mean a complete possible alternate reality. It is a term used in modal logic to test propositions- and could be paraphrase as "logically speaking, the world could have been this way".
Go to this link:
http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/facult...ES2006.pdf
How do they define possible worlds? Like this:
Quote:Possible worlds are complete ways that things might be.
Want a dictionary definition instead? No problem.
Quote:(in modal logic) a semantic device formalizing the notion of what the world might have been like. A statement is necessarily true if and only if it is true in every possible world
From:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictio...ible-world
Quote:One last try from a different angle: Possible world =/= feasible world. Feasible worlds are a subset of possible worlds. So while the proposition that everyone always chooses good is true in some possible world, it very well might not be feasible for God to create such a world because when God creates the actual world (notice I don't say "that world" because there is no such thing as that world) it very well might out that the 8th person freely chooses to do evil and the chain reaction of that evil has trillions of consequences. And, if in his foreknowledge, God can arrange the 8th person not to be tempted by x, it might be that that action causes the 7th or the 435th person to make a different choice...and so on.
Ignoring the "possible world vs. feasible world" red herring, we still have the problem of you not demonstrating that it is not feasible that all human beings can choose good all the time. All you did basically was speculate about consequences of one person choosing good vs the same person choosing evil. Speculating is not demonstrating. Try harder next time please.
I should not have used the word **possible** marked above. I see now it could create confusion when someone is new to the terminology--I was simply modifying the phrase 'alternative reality' symmetrically with 'possible worlds'. Just take that word out of the sentence.
You don't seem to clearly understand what you posted. I highlighted a couple of phrases. I didn't say anything different than what you posted. You have to start with the understanding that this is a modal logic term and until you get the hang of it should be prefaced with "purely logically speaking...".
In addition, you don't understand the other sentence you posted: "A statement is necessarily true if and only if it is true in every possible world." Exactly--for the PoE to succeed, the proposition that everyone could always choose the good must be necessarily true. It is not and that is why the PoE argument fails. Also this sentence is not defining possible worlds, it is just showing an example of using it. Here are more examples from wikipedia
Quote:True propositions are those that are true in the actual world (for example: "Richard Nixon became president in 1969").
False propositions are those that are false in the actual world (for example: "Ronald Reagan became president in 1969"). (Reagan did not run for president until 1976, and thus couldn't possibly have been elected.)
Possible propositions are those that are true in at least one possible world (for example: "Hubert Humphrey became president in 1969"). (Humphrey did run for president in 1968, and thus could have been elected.) This includes propositions which are necessarily true, in the sense below.
Impossible propositions (or necessarily false propositions) are those that are true in no possible world (for example: "Melissa and Toby are taller than each other at the same time").
Necessarily true propositions (often simply called necessary propositions) are those that are true in all possible worlds (for example: "2 + 2 = 4"; "all bachelors are unmarried").[1]
Contingent propositions are those that are true in some possible worlds and false in others (for example: "Richard Nixon became president in 1969" is contingently false and "Hubert Humphrey became president in 1969" is contingently true).
The possible world terminology and modal logic vocab is difficult and it took me awhile to understand whatever arguments I was reading the first time I encountered it. Don't read a sentence and think you got it. You need to read a whole article on the topic complete with examples.
And as far as your closing insistence that I have something I need to prove, I do not. The fact that your proposition is not necessarily true is what defeats the argument.