The Empty World as the Null Conjunction of States of Affairs

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Abstract

If possible worlds are conjunctions of states of affairs, as in David Armstrong’s combinatorial theory, then is the empty world to be thought of as the null conjunction of states of affairs? The proposal seems plausible, and has received support from David Efird, Tom Stoneham, and Armstrong himself. However, in this paper, it is argued that the proposal faces a trilemma: either it leads to the absurd conclusion that the actual world is empty; or it reduces to a familiar representation of the empty world in which the concept of a null conjunction plays no role; or it needs to make room for the null individual of certain non-classical mereologies.

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Rafael De Clercq
Lingnan University

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References found in this work

A World of States of Affairs.D. M. Armstrong - 1993 - Philosophical Perspectives 7:429-440.
Philosophical Explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Mind 93 (371):450-455.
Parts of Classes.David K. Lewis - 1991 - Mind 100 (3):394-397.
Mereology.Achille C. Varzi - 2016 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Much Ado About Nothing.Graham Priest - 2014 - Australasian Journal of Logic 11 (2).

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