The Multiplicity Of Interpreted Worlds Donald A Crosby by Donald A. Crosby 9781666906509, 9781666906523, 9781666906516, 1666906506, 1666906522, 1666906514 instant download after payment.

I lay stress on the plurality of worlds because I believe that our conceptions of the world should acknowledge the manyness of its interpreters along with their many different experiences of their surrounding worlds. This insistence is, of course, itself an interpretation, but only interpreted worlds are available to us, as I argue in this book. Interpretations can be better or worse, more or less accurate and inclusive, more or less rationally compelling, and so on. But there is no escape from the conclusion that all such worlds are interpreted worlds. Even to aspire toward a completely in-itself, all-inclusive, single, non-interpreted world is to set out on a futile journey.

In insisting on this point, do I confuse epistemology with metaphysics, as an anonymous reader of a draft of this book has suggested? The reader raises an important question, and here is my answer to it. I am a metaphysical pluralist. For me, the multiplicity of interpreted worlds alerts us to the conviction that there is no single system of the world as a whole. The world or, more properly, nature, is a congeries of innumerable systems and subsystems, none of which contains all of the others. No system is unrelated to at least some other systems, while it is equally the case that no one system is related to all other systems. Therefore, there is no container called the world that encompasses everything else. This is my metaphysical conjecture. Its pluralism is consistent with my endorsement of epistemological pluralism. The principal influences for both on me in this regard are A Pluralistic Universe by William James and Metaphysics of Natural Complexes by Justus Buchler.

The rest of this book traces out important implications of this conclusion and of its intimate connection with the critical interrelations of the inner and outer aspects of the multidimensional, multi-perspectival world in which we live.