The Ontology of Impossible Worlds

Abstract The best arguments for possible worlds. as states of affairs furnish us with equally good arguments for impossible worlds of the same sort. I argue for a theory of impossible worlds on which the impossible worlds correspond to maximal inconsistent classes of propositions. Three objections are rejected. In the final part of the paper, I present a menu of impossible worlds and explore some of their interesting formal properties. 597 I Introduction The notion of impossible worlds has received relatively little attention in the philosophical literature. When they have been mentioned, it has often been in passing, as for example, in ([7], p. 7n.), where Lewis rejects the idea in a footnote. Of those pieces which devote a significant amount of space to the topic, nearly all focus on one or another of the uses to which impossible world