Talk:David Kellogg Lewis

The "leading analytic philosopher"?
The claim that many consider Lewis to be the leading analytic philopher of the second half of the 20th century could only be established by polling those that have a view on the subject. However, I would suggest that many also consider Michael Dummett to be the leading analytic philosopher of his time. This is what the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy says (http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/dummett.htm):

"Michael Dummett is one of the most influential British philosophers of his generation. His philosophical reputation is based partly on his studies of the history of analytical philosophy, and partly on his own contributions to philosophy. Of the historical work, it is his commentaries on Gottlob Frege that are of outstanding importance. His most discussed contribution to contemporary philosophical debate is his presentation of the case that could be made for anti-realism. His work on realism and anti-realism involves all of the following fields: philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, philosophy of language and metaphysics."

I would add from personal experience that his grasp of the philosophy of quantum mechanics is truly impressive.

--- The quote says that Dummet is one of the most influential "British" philosophers of his generation. But Lewis is an American, so there's no real issue here if we wanted Lewis to be the leading philosopher. Anyway it's no doubt better to say "one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century" which is uncontroversially true. --- Fab

David Lewis (philosopher)
It's a fairly pointless business trying to rank philosophers, especially when they're our contemporaries. Much depends upon one's sympathies with their conclusions, their basic approaches to doing philosophy, and their fields of interest. Moreover, there's no contradiction or even tension between the claims that many consider David Lewis to be the finest [..., etc.] and that many consider Michael Dummett to be.

Because I disagree with Dummett's view of the role of language in philosophy, I'd tend to favour Lewis - but then I find Lewis' philosophy of mind unattractive... (Oh, and Dummett smokes too much and inconsiderately; but Lewis wore his trousers at half mast...)

But philosophy isn't a competitive sport, so why not just say that they're both important and influential philosophers, both worth reading and thinking about.

Peter J. King

Does anyone know when and where Lewis made the remark about there being Beth three spatio-termporal separate possible worlds?

Time travel
David Lewis also wrote a rather famous piece about time travel arguing for the differences between personal and external time. He believed that time travel was possible on a single timeline and not a multi-verse... does anything know enough about this to write about it some? gren 01:31, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Move
I think this should be moved to David Kellog Lewis with David Lewis (philosopher) as a redirect page to it. gren 01:31, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Agreed, I've done it.  I'll get rid of the double redirects. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 21:06, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Biography
Sorry. But i did not understand that period.

Lewis was born in Oberlin, Ohio, to a Professor of Government at Oberlin College and a distinguished medieval historian

I am translating this article into Portuguese, and i think that this information is about Lewis's parents. Is it that?

Lewis's parents were John D. Lewis Professor of Government and Ruth Ewart Kellogg Lewis medieval historian. David Kellogg Lewis is survived by his wife Stephie Lewis and two siblings Donald E. Lewis who owns and runs a car repair business and Ellen Lewis a child psychologist. Rose-design@hotmail.com 22:02, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Was David Lewis jewish? I think so but found no proof. If so he should be listed also on Category:Jewish_philosophers. --Aragon7 (talk) 11:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

A mistake
Hi! There's a mistake on the page when you're writing about the history of possible worlds in philosophy: C. S. Lewis was a writer, not a logician; the one who dealt with modal logic is C. I. Lewis. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.98.188.212 (talk) 09:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC).

About needed citation
"A related objection is that, while people are concerned with what they could have done, they are not concerned with what some people in other worlds, no matter how similar to them, do."

The needed citation is already retold in next sentence:

"As Saul Kripke once put it, a presidential candidate could not care less whether someone else, in another world, wins an election, but with whether he himself could have won it (Kripke 1980, p. 45)."

The full citation is:

"Thus if we say ‘Humphrey might have won the election (if only he had done such-and-such), we [according to Lewis] are not talking about something that might have happened to Humphrey but to someone else, a “counterpart”.’ Probably, however, Humphrey could not care less whether someone else, no matter how much resembling him, would have been victorious in another possible world."

(Saul Kripke, “Naming and Necessity”, p. 45, fn. 13, italics original, note in square brackets mine.)

Note that this criticism addresses Lewis’ counterpart theory rather than his realism about possible worlds. In the article they seem not to be clearly distinguished.--193.219.41.244 (talk) 15:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I deleted the need for citation. The context is enought. And there is good references to the article on counterpart theory. --RickardV (talk) 10:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Time Travel
I stumbleupon'ed this and this is what the person above seems to be referring to. However, that linked article is very short and lacking in details so I went here to find out more. Nothing about that mentioned in the WP article David Kellog Lewis though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.106.182.81 (talk) 19:36, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Plagiarism?
Somebody's being plagiarized here...

Wikipedia intro section on David Lewis: "He is most famous for his theory of 'modal realism.' Lewis's best known, and most controversial theory is that there exist an infinite number of concrete and causally isolated parallel universes, of which ours is just one, and which play the role of possible worlds in the analysis of necessity and possibility."

http://www.mail-archive.com/mythfolk@yahoogroups.com/msg02434.html: "He is probably best known for his controversial modal realist stance: that there exist infinitely many concretely existing and causally isolated parallel universes, of which ours is just one, and which play the role of possible worlds in the analysis of necessity and possibility."

67.169.89.173 (talk) 19:42, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. Yup, Wiki serves as an online source all over the internet. And the good news according to Wikipedia is that we are a Free Encyclopedia. We encourage people to use our work freely. Copying Wiki without acknowledgement is not plagiarism.
 * Register and join us friend. :) Alastair Haines (talk) 14:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Influence of Lewis
It's clear that he influenced Kripke, and it was easy to find the citation for Kripke, and to find that Kripke acknowledges the influence. It wasn't so easy to find the citations for the other people listed, so for the time being, I removed them. They need actual citations, not just to mention that they exist, if this article is to be improved. Rosen, in particular, doesn't have a Wikiarticle nor can I easily find the citation with basic academic searches.--Levalley (talk) 04:56, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Importance upgrade to Mid correct

 * WP Phil importance criteria notes: "Most people involved in the history of philosophy will be rated in this level."
 * That easily covers Lewis.
 * "David Lewis was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century working in the Anglo-American analytic tradition. His corpus is extraordinary for its breadth of subject matter and for its systematicity."
 * Alan Hájek, The New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, (Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006).
 * As for cites covering influences, time constrains me to pass on that atm. Alastair Haines (talk) 13:49, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

School of thought
I'd rather like to add Australian realism to Analytic in the School of thought section of the info box.
 * "In 1963 [Lewis] befriended J.J.C. Smart, who visited Harvard from Australia, consolidating Lewis as an 'Australian materialist' about the mind: mental states are physical states—specifically, neurochemical states—that play certain causal roles. An argument for this position is expounded in his first publication, 'An Argument for the Identity Theory'. In Smart's graduate seminar, Lewis met Stephanie Robinson, whom he married in 1965." (Hájek:2006)

Australian philosophy is rather endebted to his influence and friendship. It's there in a reliable source, a recent one, and it's not likely to change. If there are no strong objections in the next year or so, I'll probably be bold and add it. Alastair Haines (talk) 16:01, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Peer review
I'm going to suggest some improvements in response to Lavalley's request, and according to the six Good Article Criteria.
 * 1. Well-written
 * (a) clear and correct—the current article is fine so far
 * (b) style—ditto, sensible structure, interesting


 * 2. Reliable
 * (a) reliably sourced—the few sources mentioned are excellent, tertiary sources and sourced criticism are lacking
 * (b) in-line footnotes—nothing really detailed yet, more quotes and controversy are needed
 * (c) original research—to my limited knowledge, everything sounds well-known to semi-specialists in philosophy


 * 3. Broad
 * (a) covers main issues—yes
 * (b) no digression—yes
 * (This criterion lacks a subsection to cover the main point of the section!)
 * Not a GA criterion but (c) breadth—current revision is not comprehensive


 * 4. Neutral
 * yes :)


 * 5. Stable
 * yes :( not enough happening here


 * 6. Illustrated
 * (a) image publication data—no, neither image is adequately tagged with reliable copyright information
 * (b) images relevant and captioned—yes

There are really only a few things needed to move forwards (imo):
 * Summary:
 * 1) tertiary sources that indicate breadth of Lewis' notable published work (it is, in fact, very broad)
 * 2) clear summaries of each area of Lewis' thinking, with footnoted quotes and references to later citation of his work
 * 3) diagrams could help make some of Lewis' abstract thinking more user-friendly
 * there's a good diagram in Counterfactuals if I recall correctly, it's been more than 20 years since I read it
 * that'd be copyright (I think) but we could probably make a more swanky version just for Wiki. Would that be OR? Hmmmm.


 * 1) fix up the image copyright issues! Princeton and Stephanie would probably say "yes", contact them!

A last thought. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plans to publish two articles on David Lewis: a general one, and one on his metaphysics. If anyone would care for a fun challenge, you and your team could strive to get this article featured at Wiki before Stanford publish online. It would be an impressive example of how much faster a Wikipedia can produce a quality article for general readership. Perhaps someone would like to offer a bounty on this article? A donation to Wiki if we get it featured before Stanford publish theirs online?

I'll be leaving this article on my watchlist, and will do all I can to help anyone wanting to push it forward. Cheers Alastair Haines (talk) 12:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Unsourced text removal
"One of the main concerns of Lewis (1986) is to address some of these criticisms."

Someone correctly tagged this sentence with "fact?" Lewis 1986 has a substantial introduction, which is explicit about why he selected the papers that are published in that volume. He gives many reasons, some more significant than others, but does not address "these criticisms" (i.e. those in the current revision of the Wiki article).

Lewis 1986 is (in part) online and a link is now supplied in the article. His intro provides a reliable source par excellence regarding his aims, both in Philosophical Papers and more broadly. There he says this:


 * What I want to fight are philosophical arguments against Humean supervenience. When philosophers claim that one or another commonplace feature of the world cannot supervene on the arrangement of qualities, I make it my business to resist. Being a commonsensical fellow (except where unactualized possible worlds are concerned) I will seldom deny that the features in question exist. I grant their existence, and do my best to show how they can, after all, supervene on the arrangement of qualities.
 * David Lewis, Philosophical Papers (vol. II, OUP US, 1986, p. xi.)

Cheers, Alastair Haines (talk) 04:34, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Changed "Demise" to "Death"
As far as I know, there is no reason to use the word "demise" rather than "death" in the section heading concerning his "later life and death." Before I changed it, it read, "later life and demise," which seems to suggest a failure or a downfall. Death is, therefore, a more objective term appropriate for an encyclopedia. Now, if he ever referred to his death as his "demise," that would change things, but as far as I can tell, there is no reason to prefer the less common and more value-laden word. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brijohn6882 (talk • contribs) 17:39, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

No consensus to move. However, a difference form of disambiguation can be used. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:50, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

David Kellogg Lewis → David Lewis – I'm not sure how common the formatting of his name as 'David Kellogg Lewis' actually is. Certainly, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy prefers 'David Lewis'. And most of his articles and books refer to him in the same way. Any thoughts? George Richard Leeming (talk) 10:14, 26 April 2011 (UTC) My mistake: It shouldn't replace the disambiguation page. However, it should still be given a different title. What about 'David Lewis (Philosopher)'? Or does this breach guidelines? --George Richard Leeming (talk) 09:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose David Lewis is a disambiguation page. You haven't explained why this article should displace the disambiguation page, or replace it (with a giant hatnote on this article). 65.94.45.160 (talk) 05:31, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.