David Kellogg Lewis Quotes

We can imagine the impossible, provided we do not imagine it in perfect detail and all at once.

in learning how to imagine x, you gain abilities; later you have all the relevant imaginative abilities you had before, and more besides. and you notice, a priori, relationships of coherence or incoherence between attitudes that might figure in the realisation of x; later you are aware of all that you had noticed before, and more besides. and you think of new questions to explore in your imagining...and later you have in mind all the questions you had thought of before, and more besides.

I believe, and so do you, that things could have been different in countless ways. But what does this mean? Ordinary language permits the paraphrase: there are many ways things could have been besides the way they actually are. I believe that things could have been different in countless ways; I believe permissible paraphrases of what I believe; taking the paraphrase at its face value, I therefore believe in the existence of entities that might be called ‘ways things could have been.’ I prefer to call them ‘possible worlds.

I do not know how to refute an incredulous stare.