Possible Worlds from the Viewpoints of Kripke, Plantinga and David Lewis

Kripke applied the notion of possible worlds to present formal semantics of modal logic. However, the application of the notion of possible worlds is not restricted to modal logic semantics. Rather, this notion has also been used in certain theories of philosophy of language or philosophy of logic in such theories of the nature of propositions.In view of the increasing significance of the notion of possible worlds, the present article studies in short the views certain contemporary theoreticians have raised on the nature of these worlds and their alleged characteristics. To do so, the writer first gives a very intensive account of Kripke’s metaphysical views on the nature of possible worlds and the two chief approaches to the notion of possible worlds under the titles of realism positivism and abstractionism and goes on to make a comparative analysis in this regard.To meet this purpose, the writer deals with David Lewis’s view as the most influential representative of realism positivism and Alvin Plantinga’s view as the distinguished representative of abstractionism.