Editing World (section)

=== Goodman ===
The concept of worlds plays a central role in [[Nelson Goodman]]'s late philosophy.<ref name="Declos"/> He argues that we need to posit different worlds in order to account for the fact that there are different incompatible truths found in reality.<ref name="Cohnitz">{{cite web |last1=Cohnitz |first1=Daniel |last2=Rossberg |first2=Marcus |title=Nelson Goodman: 6. Irrealism and Worldmaking |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goodman/#IrrWor |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=15 April 2021 |date=2020}}</ref> Two truths are incompatible if they ascribe incompatible properties to the same thing.<ref name="Declos"/> This happens, for example, when we assert both that the earth moves and that the earth is at rest. These incompatible truths correspond to two different ways of describing the world: [[heliocentrism]] and [[geocentrism]].<ref name="Cohnitz"/> Goodman terms such descriptions "world versions". He holds a [[correspondence theory of truth]]: a world version is true if it corresponds to a world. Incompatible true world versions correspond to different worlds.<ref name="Cohnitz"/> It is common for theories of modality to posit the existence of a plurality of possible worlds. But Goodman's theory is different since it posits a plurality not of possible but of actual worlds.<ref name="Declos"/><ref name="Sandkühler"/> Such a position is in danger of involving a contradiction: there cannot be a plurality of actual worlds if worlds are defined as maximally inclusive wholes.<ref name="Declos"/><ref name="Sandkühler"/> This danger may be avoided by interpreting Goodman's world-concept not as maximally inclusive wholes in the absolute sense but in relation to its corresponding world-version: a world contains all and only the entities that its world-version describes.<ref name="Declos"/><ref name="Sandkühler"/>