rationalskepticism.org

Teuton wrote:

Thommo wrote:

Paul Almond wrote:My own view would be that the set of possible worlds should be the set of all worlds which we do not know to be inconsistent with our knowledge - and I would actually admit logically inconsistent worlds into this set.

I think this is indeed the standard practise.

I don't think that most logicians use "possible world" in the sense of "epistemically possible world" rather than "logically possible world" or "ontologically/metaphysically possible world". And internally inconsistent or contradictory worlds are impossible worlds rather than possible worlds.

I don't think most logicians mean anything by "possible world" beyond its formal definition. But we aren't talking about logicians, we are talking about what philosophers intend to capture with the concept of a possible world. And I really can't be bothered to get into the ins and outs of whether we can be judged to formally "know" the logical consequences of all the things we know. It doesn't matter one way or the other in practise.

Obviously we do know that logically contradictory worlds are not possible, their accidental inclusion in the set of possible worlds in some model is only ever going to be a mistake, it really doesn't matter how you then classify that mistake in your own mind.