Extended modal realism

Extended modal realism is a metaphysical position in the philosophy of modality that builds upon David Lewis's modal realism by positing the concrete existence not only of all possible worlds but also of impossible worlds, treating them as real entities within a unified, modally extended universe.^[1]^[2] Developed primarily by philosopher Takashi Yagisawa, this extension allows for the direct representation of logical and metaphysical impossibilities, such as contradictory states of affairs, without reducing them to mere linguistic or conceptual fictions.^[1] Unlike standard modal realism, which limits concrete worlds to those that are possible, extended modal realism employs a modal-dimensional framework where worlds function as indices along spatial, temporal, and modal dimensions, enabling objects to have "stages" across these worlds that share spatiotemporal relations.^[2] This theory addresses longstanding philosophical challenges, particularly those involving non-existence and intentionality. For instance, it provides a solution to the problem of intentional inexistence—how mental states can be directed toward objects that do not exist—by allowing non-actual and impossible entities to exist as concrete modal parts, thereby permitting genuine relations without requiring causal interaction across isolated worlds.^[3] Proponents argue that extended modal realism avoids the isolationist implications of Lewis's original view, where worlds are spatiotemporally disconnected, by unifying them under a single existence predicate that incorporates modal tenses beyond mere possibility and actuality.^[1] It also offers advantages in semantic and truth-making theories, such as reviving aspects of Lewis-Rosen truthmaker theory while accommodating impossible scenarios in logic and thought.^[4] Critics of extended modal realism contend that positing impossible worlds risks incoherence, as concrete impossibilities might undermine the very logic they aim to explain, though defenders counter that such worlds are no more paradoxical than possible ones when viewed through a dimensionalist lens.^[2] The position has influenced discussions in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and formal semantics, serving as a tool for analyzing hyperintensional contexts where possible worlds alone prove insufficient.^[3] Overall, extended modal realism represents an ambitious expansion of realist approaches to modality, prioritizing ontological inclusivity to capture the full spectrum of modal discourse.

Background and Development

David Lewis's modal realism, which forms the foundational basis for extended modal realism, is most comprehensively presented in his 1986 book On the Plurality of Worlds. In this work, Lewis defends the thesis that there exists a vast plurality of worlds, each as concrete and real as the actual world inhabited by humanity.^[5] These possible worlds serve as the semantic basis for analyzing modal notions: a statement is possible if it is true at some possible world, and necessary if true at all possible worlds.^[6] Lewis contends that this concretist ontology avoids the need for abstract entities by reducing modality to straightforward quantification over these existent worlds, thereby providing a unified and parsimonious metaphysical framework.^[5] Central to Lewis's theory are the characteristics of these worlds: they are maximally specific and isolated. Each world realizes a complete and unique way that the universe could be, encompassing every detail without vagueness or incompleteness, such that "absolutely every way that a world could possibly be is a way that some world is."^[6] Isolation ensures their distinctness; no two worlds share parts, and there are no direct spatiotemporal or causal relations between them, as worlds are defined as maximal sums of spatiotemporally related things.^[5] This principle of isolation, wherein different worlds are "causally disconnected" and exhibit only external resemblances, prevents overlap and maintains the integrity of each world as a self-contained cosmos.^[5] Lewis addresses the apparent privilege of the actual world through his indexical theory of actuality. The term "actual" functions indexically, akin to "here" or "now," designating the world from which the utterance is made rather than an absolute property.^[5] Thus, speakers in other worlds would unproblematically deem their own world actual, eliminating any ontological asymmetry among the worlds.^[6] This relativization of actuality underscores Lewis's commitment to treating all worlds on equal footing, with our world being merely the one we indexically inhabit.^[5] The roots of modal realism trace back to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's 17th-century discussions of possible worlds as complete individual concepts from which God selects the best.^[6] In the modern era, the framework evolved through the development of possible worlds semantics for modal logic by Saul Kripke and Jaakko Hintikka in the 1950s and 1960s, who formalized modality using abstract set-theoretic structures.^[6] Lewis's key innovation was to reconceptualize these worlds as concrete rather than abstract, transforming a semantic tool into a robust metaphysical doctrine that posits their full reality.^[5]

Takashi Yagisawa's Formulation and Key Publications

Takashi Yagisawa introduced extended modal realism (EMR) as an extension of David Lewis's modal realism, primarily through his 1988 paper "Beyond Possible Worlds,"^[7] where he argues for the inclusion of impossible worlds to address inadequacies in treating only possible worlds as concrete entities. In this formulation, EMR posits that ordinary objects possess modal parts that extend not only into possible worlds but also into impossible ones, enabling a concrete ontological grounding for contradictory states of affairs that cannot be represented within Lewis's framework of logically consistent maximal possibilities. Yagisawa elaborates and refines this theory in his 2010 book Worlds and Individuals, Possible and Otherwise, presenting EMR as a comprehensive metaphysical system that integrates impossibilia alongside possibilia.^[8] Yagisawa's development of EMR was motivated by perceived limitations in Lewis's modal realism, particularly its inability to adequately handle phenomena such as intentionality, non-referring terms, and logical impossibilities like round squares, which require representing inconsistent or contradictory scenarios without reducing them to mere abstractions or fictions. By incorporating impossible worlds, EMR provides a realist treatment of these cases, allowing for the concrete existence of entities that exemplify contradictions, such as a part of an object that is both round and square in an impossible world.^[8] This approach responds directly to challenges in semantics and metaphysics where possible-worlds semantics falters, offering a more robust extensional ontology for modal logic and intentional contexts. Central to Yagisawa's EMR is the parity thesis, which holds that possible and impossible worlds are ontologically equivalent, each being concrete mereological sums of individuals or modal parts, without privileging the consistent over the inconsistent.^[8] Unlike Lewis's restriction of worlds to maximally specific, logically consistent totalities, EMR explicitly rejects this limit, permitting the existence of non-maximal worlds and outright inconsistent ones that violate logical principles. This expansion broadens the scope of modal realism to encompass a fuller range of modal and amodal phenomena, positioning EMR as a foundational contribution to the metaphysics of modality.^[8]

Ontological Framework

In extended modal realism, the structure of reality extends beyond the familiar spatial and temporal dimensions of our universe to include an additional modal dimension. Just as spacetime comprises points that are discrete and unconnected regions—such as distinct locations or moments—modal space consists of discrete points, each representing a world. These worlds are isolated from one another, with no direct causal or spatiotemporal links between them, emphasizing the dimensional extension of reality into modality.^[9] Takashi Yagisawa's modal dimensionalism posits that individuals in this framework are not confined to a single world but are extended across the modal dimension through modal parts, analogous to how they extend spatially across locations or temporally across times. An individual occupies multiple points in modal space via these modal stages, which are portions of the individual distributed across different worlds. This extension allows for a unified ontology where the entire reality is a single, five-dimensional structure encompassing spatial, temporal, and modal axes. Unlike Lewis's concrete worlds, Yagisawa's are non-concrete indices in a dimensional framework.^[9] Worlds within this modal dimension are indices or points, neither concrete nor abstract, distinguishing from abstract sets in ersatz theories, and are indexed by modal coordinates similar to how events are located by spatiotemporal coordinates. Similarity between worlds is assessed qualitatively, often through chains of overlapping properties or the closest-continuer relation, without a metric distance. This structured way navigates the modal landscape without implying physical connectivity. This dimensional framework enables trans-world identity through mereological composition, whereby an individual is the mereological sum of its modal parts across all relevant worlds, connected by chains of similarity. Such composition preserves the unity of the individual despite its distribution, avoiding the need for primitive haecceities or counterpart relations. The points populating this modal dimension include those corresponding to possible and impossible worlds.^[9]

Concrete Possible and Impossible Worlds

In extended modal realism, possible worlds are indexed as maximally specific and consistent arrangements of individuals and their properties, adhering to the laws of logic and nature. Each possible world mirrors David Lewis's original formulation but integrated into Takashi Yagisawa's broader ontological framework. These worlds embody what could be the case, ensuring that no contradictions arise and that every proposition is either true or false without violation.^[10] Impossible worlds, a distinctive extension in this theory, are indices that allow for logical contradictions or violations of metaphysical necessities, such as a scenario where a proposition P and its negation not-P both hold true simultaneously. Unlike possible worlds, they are non-maximal or inconsistent, allowing for representations of absolute impossibilities like round squares or scenarios where 2 + 2 = 5. These worlds serve as indices in the modal dimension, populated by individuals bearing contradictory properties, thereby providing a realist account of what cannot be the case.^[10] A crucial distinction in extended modal realism is that both possible and impossible worlds are spatiotemporal in the stages they index, rejecting abstract ersatz representations found in other modal theories; impossible worlds directly make impossible propositions true by virtue of what obtains within them. This status ensures that impossibilities are not mere fictions or linguistic constructs but robust ontological entities on par with the actual world.^[10]^[11] Yagisawa argues in his 2010 work that impossible worlds are indispensable for handling hyperintensional contexts, such as propositional attitudes or fine-grained semantic distinctions, where possible worlds alone fail to differentiate between necessarily equivalent propositions with differing cognitive or informational content. For instance, in analyzing beliefs or meanings, impossible worlds allow for the representation of scenarios that possible worlds cannot capture without collapsing equivalences.^[10]

Key Concepts

Actuality, Possibility, and Impossibility

In extended modal realism (EMR), actuality functions as an indexical concept, referring exclusively to the world in which the speaker or asserter is located, much like the indexical nature of "here" or "now." This aligns with David Lewis's original modal realism, where the actual world is not metaphysically privileged but is simply the world containing the speaker's modal stage; in EMR, this extends to encompass the modal parts of individuals situated within that actual world.^[8]^[7] Possibility and necessity are defined in terms of truth at possible worlds, which are concrete, consistent spatiotemporal systems. A proposition is possible if it is true at at least one possible world, and necessary if it is true at all possible worlds; these definitions preserve the Lewisian framework while integrating EMR's broader ontology.^[8] In EMR, possible worlds serve as the primary truth-bearers for modal claims, ensuring that possibilities are grounded in fully concrete entities rather than abstract representations.^[7] Impossibility in EMR encompasses propositions that hold true solely at impossible worlds, such as those involving logical contradictions, thereby distinguishing broad impossibility—which includes violations of logic—from narrower metaphysical impossibilities limited to consistent but unrealizable scenarios. Unlike standard modal realism, EMR accommodates absolute impossibilities by positing concrete impossible worlds where contradictory states obtain, allowing propositions like counterlogicals to have direct truth-makers without reducing to mere falsehoods in possible worlds.^[8]^[7] This approach enables a robust semantics for impossibilia, treating them as ontologically on par with possibilia while maintaining the indexicality of actuality.^[8] In extended modal realism, individuals are conceived as modally extended entities, possessing modal parts that occupy distinct possible or impossible worlds, analogous to how temporally extended objects have temporal parts at different times. A modal part is a proper part of an individual located at a specific world-index, realizing the properties and relations pertinent to that world. For instance, consider an individual like Socrates: his modal part at the actual world may instantiate historical facts such as drinking hemlock, while another modal part at a nearby possible world instantiates an alternative where he escapes into exile, thereby allowing the full individual to participate in multiple modal scenarios without contradiction.^[8] Trans-world identity in this framework is secured through mereological composition, where the complete individual is the mereological fusion of all its modal parts across the modal dimension, much like a spatially extended object is the fusion of its spatial parts. This mereological approach treats modal extension as a dimension on par with space and time, enabling direct identity across worlds without positing separate, unrelated counterparts. Takashi Yagisawa argues that this structure unifies the individual's existence modally, rejecting David Lewis's counterpart theory—which relies on similarity relations between distinct individuals at different worlds—in favor of a unified, part-whole ontology that preserves strict identity.^[8]^[12] A distinctive feature of Yagisawa's innovation arises in impossible worlds, where modal parts can instantiate contradictory properties, addressing puzzles involving impossible objects. For example, a modal part at an impossible world might realize being both perfectly round and perfectly square, forming a genuine "round square" as part of a larger individual, thus resolving issues with referential failure or non-referring terms by grounding them in concrete, albeit inconsistent, modal parts. This mereological extension into impossibilia extends the ontology beyond Lewis's possible worlds, allowing impossible entities to be real components of modally extended individuals.^[8]^[13] Actuality, in this view, is indexed to the modal parts located at the actual world, limiting our direct access to those specific parts.^[8]

Implications for Existence and Reality

The Universe as the Totality of All Worlds

In extended modal realism, the universe is the comprehensive totality encompassing all possible and impossible worlds as indices within the modal dimension.^[2] This totality includes every modal index, where objects have concrete modal stages or parts that are causally and spatiotemporally interrelated within possible worlds and under impossible conditions in impossible worlds. Unlike more restrictive ontologies, this structure integrates all entities across modal space, ensuring that no aspect of reality—whether actual, possible, or impossible—is excluded from the whole.^[11] The totality principle underscores this conception by asserting that there are no worlds outside this dimensional framework; the universe constitutes the entirety of modal reality, with the modal dimension serving as the organizing axis analogous to spatiotemporal dimensions.^[2] Consequently, the universe's ontological richness arises from admitting impossible worlds, which index contradictions and non-possibilities as concrete modal stages on par with their possible counterparts. In contrast to David Lewis's modal realism, where the universe is the mereological sum solely of possible worlds, extended modal realism—through its modal dimensionalism—incorporates impossible worlds as additional indices, thereby providing a more comprehensive ontology.^[2] Lewis's framework privileges possibility and equates the actual world indexically with the universe from our perspective, but Yagisawa's approach rejects such indexicality in favor of a non-indexical existence that applies uniformly across all worlds in the totality. This expansion allows for a robust treatment of modal concepts without privileging actuality, as every world-index contributes equally to the universe's composition.^[11] In extended modal realism, existence is understood as domain-relative and indexical, meaning an entity exists within a specific modal frame or world if it possesses a concrete world-stage or modal part there. This framework posits that all entities—whether actual, possible, or impossible—are real in a fundamental, monadic sense, but their existence is contextualized by the modal dimension in which their parts are located. Thus, an entity exists overall if it has modal parts in at least one world, encompassing both possibilia, which have parts in possible worlds, and impossibilia, which have parts in impossible worlds.^[14] Non-actual entities, such as fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, exist non-actually through their modal parts in fictional or impossible worlds, while being indexically actual only from the perspective of the actual world. This allows for a unified ontology where such entities are fully extended across modal dimensions, with their reality grounded in concrete parts rather than abstract subsistence. By treating non-existent objects as having real modal parts in non-actual domains, extended modal realism addresses Meinongian problems of intentional inexistence, avoiding distinctions between existence and subsistence by providing concrete truthmakers for statements about them without positing a separate realm of non-beings.^[14] Unlike actualism, which restricts existence to only those entities that are actual and denies reality to possibilia altogether, extended modal realism functions as a form of modal actualism broadened to impossibilities, affirming that all real entities exist somewhere along the modal dimension. The universe, as the totality of all such modally extended existents, integrates these parts into a single, five-dimensional structure.^[14]

Applications

Solving Intentional Inexistence

The problem of intentional inexistence arises from the observation that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, appear to be directed toward objects that do not exist in reality, such as unicorns or Pegasus, challenging relational theories of intentionality. This issue was first prominently articulated by Franz Brentano, who argued that intentional phenomena involve a directedness toward objects with "intentional inexistence," meaning they may lack actual existence yet serve as the content of mental acts. Bertrand Russell further highlighted the difficulty with non-referring terms in definite descriptions, like "the present King of France," which seem to fail reference without rendering sentences meaningless or true by default. Extended modal realism (EMR) addresses intentional inexistence by positing that such non-actual objects exist concretely as modal parts within a unified universe encompassing possible and impossible worlds. In this framework, developed by Takashi Yagisawa, objects like Pegasus are not mere nothings or abstract proxies but real entities possessing modal stages in non-actual worlds where winged horses obtain, allowing genuine relational intentional states without requiring actual existence. For instance, a belief about Pegasus relates the believer to the modal part of Pegasus in a relevant possible world, preserving the relational nature of intentionality. This approach, as analyzed by Andrew D. Thomas in 2020, specifies that intentional states function as relations to these modal parts across the modal dimension, indexed by world-stages, thereby avoiding the need for non-relational or abstract intermediaries that other theories invoke. This leverages existence across modal dimensions to provide concrete referents for intentional objects, enabling thoughts about non-existents as direct counterparts to actual relations.^[15] Unlike David Lewis's standard modal realism, which limits concreta to possible worlds and struggles with purely impossible intentional objects like square circles, EMR incorporates impossible worlds to accommodate such cases, ensuring all intentional targets have concrete modal realizations.^[15] This extension allows EMR to handle a broader range of intentional inexistence without resorting to isolation between worlds or denying impossible contents.^[15]

Addressing Counterpossibles and Logical Contradictions

Counterpossibles are counterfactual conditionals whose antecedents describe impossible scenarios, such as "If 2 + 2 = 5, then the moon is made of cheese."^[11] In David Lewis's modal realism, which posits only possible worlds, such conditionals are vacuously true because no possible world satisfies the antecedent, rendering their semantics trivial and uninformative for philosophical analysis. Extended modal realism (EMR), as developed by Takashi Yagisawa, addresses this limitation by incorporating concrete impossible worlds into the ontology, allowing counterpossibles to be evaluated non-vacuously.^[16] Under EMR, the truth of a counterpossible is determined by assessing the consequent at those impossible worlds where the antecedent holds true.^[16] This approach enables substantive evaluations; for instance, the conditional "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then he would have been burned at the stake" can be true based on historical and mathematical considerations at relevant impossible worlds, rather than defaulting to vacuity. Such semantics provides a framework for meaningful reasoning about impossibilities, as argued by Daniel Nolan in his modest proposal for impossible worlds.^[17] Logical contradictions, such as propositions of the form "P and not P," pose another challenge for standard possible worlds semantics, where such statements are necessarily false across all worlds. EMR resolves this by positing specific impossible worlds at which contradictions obtain, thereby accommodating hyperintensional logics that distinguish between necessarily equivalent propositions.^[16] This allows for the truth of contradictory propositions in isolated modal contexts without exploding into triviality. Impossible worlds in EMR enable paraconsistent reasoning in contexts like belief revision or relevance logic, where contradictions are localized rather than globally explosive.^[16]

Criticisms and Responses

Ontological Commitments and Extravagance

Extended modal realism (EMR) commits its proponents to an ontology that includes not only all possible worlds and their inhabitants but also infinitely many impossible worlds, each realizing distinct contradictions and impossibilia, such as objects that are both perfectly round and square or scenarios where every logical inconsistency obtains. This extension vastly expands the metaphysical inventory beyond the already expansive commitments of standard modal realism, which limits concrete existence to possibilia alone. David Lewis's framework for standard modal realism excludes impossible worlds by definition, confining concrete existence to possible worlds alone.^[6] A particular concern arises from the failure of the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals within impossible worlds, where a single object might instantiate contradictory properties—such as being both round and not round—rendering Leibniz's law inapplicable and complicating the mereological composition of such worlds as fusions of parts.^[18] This violation challenges the coherence of treating impossibilia as on par with possibilia in a unified ontology.^[18] In comparison, EMR's ontology is far more profligate than standard modal realism, which confines concreteness to possible worlds, or ersatz modal theories, which represent modal claims using abstracta like sets of propositions to sidestep commitments to any non-actual concrete entities, let alone impossibilities. The entire universe, under EMR, emerges as the mereological sum of this boundless array of possible and impossible realms. Proponents respond that the ontological extravagance is justified by the explanatory power gained in handling intentionality and hyperintensionality, with impossible worlds no more incoherent than the vast plurality of possible ones when viewed through a dimensionalist framework.^[1]

Challenges to Logical Consistency and Semantics

One prominent challenge to the logical consistency of extended modal realism (EMR) concerns the exportation problem, which arises when truths holding at impossible worlds are projected back to the actual world. In EMR, as formulated by Yagisawa, impossible worlds are concrete entities where contradictions obtain, allowing for the evaluation of conditionals with impossible antecedents. However, if a conditional such as "If Hesperus is Phosphorus, then water is H₂O" is deemed true at an impossible world where Hesperus is not Phosphorus, exporting the antecedent and consequent separately to the actual world could yield contradictory claims, such as asserting that Hesperus is both Phosphorus and not Phosphorus in reality. This issue, highlighted by Jago, suggests that EMR permits the derivation of actual contradictions from merely modal reasoning, threatening the theory's coherence with classical logic.^[19] Semantic challenges further complicate EMR's treatment of truth conditions at impossible worlds, particularly the risk of logical explosion where contradictions entail arbitrary truths. Defining truth in concrete impossible worlds, where propositions like "P and not-P" hold, invites the principle of explosion (ex falso quodlibet), under which any contradiction implies every statement, potentially collapsing the semantic distinction between possible and impossible scenarios. Critics contend that without additional machinery, such as non-classical logics or restricted exportation rules, EMR fails to contain this spillover, rendering its semantics unstable for broader applications. Moreover, while EMR aims to address hyperintensionality—distinguishing necessarily equivalent contents like logical truths from distinct cognitive attitudes—it does not fully resolve the issue, as the concrete nature of impossible worlds still relies on intensional embeddings that may not capture fine-grained propositional differences without supplementary formal tools.^[20] Francesco Berto has argued that EMR overcommits to concrete contradictions by positing impossible worlds as fully real entities, which undermines adherence to classical logic without providing unequivocal advantages for evaluating counterpossibles. In this view, the theory's endorsement of worlds where logical impossibilities obtain forces a revision of entailment principles, yet it offers no superior framework for handling counterfactuals with impossible antecedents compared to ersatz or abstract alternatives. This overcommitment risks semantic triviality, as the reality of contradictory states erodes the boundaries of rational discourse.^[20] An additional objection targets the indexical role of "actuality" in EMR, rendering it murky when impossible worlds enjoy the same concrete status as possible ones. Under Yagisawa's extension of Lewisian modal realism, "actual" functions indexically to pick out the speaker's world, but equating impossible worlds with actual ones in ontological parity blurs this distinction, potentially implying that contradictory realities are "actual" from their internal perspective, which confounds modal indexing and truth evaluation across worlds. Defenders counter these semantic challenges by emphasizing that EMR's modal-dimensional structure allows for non-explosive logics at impossible worlds and preserves classical logic at possible ones, providing a unified ontology that accommodates both without spillover.^[2]