A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their metaphysical status has been a subject of controversy in philosophy, with modal realists such as David Lewis arguing that there are literally existing alternate realities, and others such as Robert Stalnaker arguing that alternate realities do not exist.
Logic
Possible worlds are one of the foundational concepts in modal and intensional logics. Formulas in these logics are used to represent statements about what might be true, what should be true, what one believes to be true and so forth. To give these statements a formal interpretation, logicians use structures containing possible worlds. For instance, in the relational semantics for classical propositional modal logic, the formula ◊ P {\displaystyle \Diamond P} (read as "possibly P") is actually true if and only if P {\displaystyle P} is true in some world which is accessible from the actual world. Possible worlds play a central role in the work of both linguists and/or philosophers working in formal semantics. Contemporary formal semantics is couched in formal systems rooted in Montague grammar, which is itself built on Richard Montague's intensional logic. Contemporary research in semantics typically uses possible worlds as formal tools without committing to a particular theory of their metaphysical status. The term possible world is retained even by those who attach no metaphysical significance to them. In the field of database theory, possible worlds are also a notion used in the setting of uncertain databases and probabilistic databases, which serve as a succinct representation of a large number of possible worlds.
Argument from ways Possible worlds are often regarded with suspicion, which is why their proponents have struggled to find arguments in their favor. An often-cited argument is called the argument from ways. It defines possible worlds as "ways things could have been" and relies for its premises and inferences on assumptions from natural language, for example:
The Black Death could have killed 99% of the European population, rather than the estimated 25 to 60%. So there are other ways things could have been. Possible worlds are ways things could have been. So there are other possible worlds. The central step of this argument happens at (2) where the plausible (1) is interpreted in a way that involves quantification over "ways". Many philosophers, following Willard Van Orman Quine, hold that quantification entails ontological commitments, in this case, a commitment to the existence of possible worlds. Quine himself restricted his method to scientific theories, but others have applied it also to natural language, for example, Amie L. Thomasson in her paper entitled Ontology Made Easy. The strength of the argument from ways depends on these assumptions and may be challenged by casting doubt on the quantifier-method of ontology or on the reliability of natural language as a guide to ontology.
Philosophical issues and applications
Metaphysics
The ontological status of possible worlds has provoked intense debate. David Lewis famously advocated for a position known as modal realism, which holds that possible worlds are real, concrete places which exist in the exact same sense that the actual world exists. On Lewis's account, the actual world is special only in that we live there. This doctrine is called the indexicality of actuality since it can be understood as claiming that the term "actual" is an indexical, like "now" and "here". Lewis gave a variety of arguments for this position. He argued that just as the reality of atoms is demonstrated by their explanatory power in physics, so too are possible worlds justified by their explanatory power in philosophy. He also argued that possible worlds must be real because they are simply "ways things could have been" and nobody doubts that such things exist. Finally, he argued that they could not be reduced to more "ontologically respectable" entities such as maximally consistent sets of propositions without rendering theories of modality circular. (He referred to these theories as "ersatz modal realism" which try to get the benefits of possible worlds semantics "on the cheap"). Modal realism is controversial. W.V. Quine rejected it as "metaphysically extravagant". Stalnaker responded to Lewis's arguments by pointing out that a way things could have been is not itself a world, but rather a property that such a world can have. Since properties can exist without them applying to any existing objects, there's no reason to conclude that other worlds like ours exist. Another of Stalnaker's arguments attacks Lewis's indexicality theory of actuality. Stalnaker argues that even if the English word "actual" is an indexical, that doesn't mean that other worlds exist. For comparison, one can use the indexical "I" without believing that other people actually exist. Some philosophers instead endorse the view of possible worlds as maximally consistent sets of propositions or descriptions, while others such as Saul Kripke treat them as purely formal (i.e. mathematical) devices.
Explicating necessity and possibility At least since Aristotle, philosophers have been greatly concerned with the logical statuses of propositions, e.g. necessity, contingency, and impossibility. In the twentieth century, possible worlds have been used to explicate these notions. In modal logic, a proposition is understood in terms of the worlds in which it is true and worlds in which it is false. Thus, equivalences like the following have been proposed:
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