Here is where we write about the things we don't fully understand from the class readings and lectures. This is a page for questions, half-baked ideas, possible objections, issues of interpretation, etc. So be warned: this page may contain sentences that are false.
Sep 20, 2007
Accessibility?
Can we get a list going of the various questions/issues that were discussed in class concerning accessibility? I'm having trouble remembering. In what ways did we find this notion to be problematic?
If to say that a world is accessible to a person isn’t just to say that it is possible for that person (in that person’s power/in that person’s ability/etc.) to bring it about that that world is actual (and Feldman insists that it isn’t), then I take it that few people will have any clue which worlds are accessible to a person. I certainly have no intuitive sense of which worlds are accessible to me if “accessible” here isn’t just another way of saying “possible for me to make actual” or something like this. Feldman claims “accessibility” a primitive concept, but unfortunately few people seem to possess it. But this is a big problem for Feldman since his criterion of rightness is founded on accessibility. He says, roughly, that s morally ought, as of t, to bring it about that p iff p occurs in some accessible world to s at t and it is not the case that ~p occurs in any accessible world (to s at t) that is as good or better. However, if we don’t know what Feldman means by “accessible,” then we won’t understand what his criterion of rightness is stating, and we will thus be unable to say whether it is plausible or not. I take it that this is the main problem with accessibility for Feldman.
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If to say that a world is accessible to a person isn’t just to say that it is possible for that person (in that person’s power/in that person’s ability/etc.) to bring it about that that world is actual (and Feldman insists that it isn’t), then I take it that few people will have any clue which worlds are accessible to a person. I certainly have no intuitive sense of which worlds are accessible to me if “accessible” here isn’t just another way of saying “possible for me to make actual” or something like this. Feldman claims “accessibility” a primitive concept, but unfortunately few people seem to possess it. But this is a big problem for Feldman since his criterion of rightness is founded on accessibility. He says, roughly, that s morally ought, as of t, to bring it about that p iff p occurs in some accessible world to s at t and it is not the case that ~p occurs in any accessible world (to s at t) that is as good or better. However, if we don’t know what Feldman means by “accessible,” then we won’t understand what his criterion of rightness is stating, and we will thus be unable to say whether it is plausible or not. I take it that this is the main problem with accessibility for Feldman.
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