Worlds, Books, and Essential Properties

In The Nature of Necessity. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press (1974)
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Abstract

I begin by introducing the ideas of possible worlds, books on worlds, and essential properties. A possible world is a broadly logically possible state of affairs that is maximal. Furthermore, for any possible world W and proposition p, let the book on W be the set S of propositions such that p is a member of S if W entails p. Finally, an object x has property P essentially if and only if x has P and has it in every world in which x exists. I use the above three concepts to give a sound argument for the conclusion that human persons are essentially immaterial.

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Alvin Plantinga
University of Notre Dame

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