Editing David Lewis (philosopher) (section)

{{short description|American philosopher (1941–2001)}}
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{{Infobox philosopher
|region = [[Western philosophy]]
|era    = [[20th-century philosophy]]
|name    = David Lewis
|image  = David Lewis (1962) (cropped).webp
|caption = Lewis in 1962, while at [[Swarthmore College]]
|birth_name   = David Kellogg Lewis
|other_names = Bruce Le Catt<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.science.org/content/article/philosophy-journal-corrects-35-year-old-article-written-cat |title=Philosophy journal corrects 35-year-old article 'written' by a cat |last=Guglielmi |first=Giorgia |date=1 August 2017 |work=[[Science (journal)|Science]]}}</ref>
|birth_date  = September 28, 1941
|birth_place = [[Oberlin, Ohio|Oberlin]], [[Ohio]], U.S.
|death_date  = October 14, 2001 (aged 60)
|death_place = [[Princeton, New Jersey|Princeton]], [[New Jersey]], U.S.
|education   = [[Swarthmore College]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]])<br/>[[St Anne's College, Oxford]]<br/>[[Harvard University]] ([[PhD]])
|institutions = [[Princeton University]]
|school_tradition = [[Analytic philosophy|Analytic]]<br>[[Nominalism]]<ref>[https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/resemblance-nominalism-a-solution-to-the-problem-of-universals/ "Review of Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, ''Resemblance Nominalism: A Solution to the Problem of Universals''" – ndpr.nd.edu]</ref><br>[[Perdurantism]]<ref>Lewis, D. K. 1986. ''[[On the Plurality of Worlds]]'' Oxford: Blackwell.</ref>
|main_interests   = [[Logic]]{{·}}[[Language]]{{·}}[[Metaphysics]]<br/>[[Epistemology]]{{·}}[[Ethics]]
|notable_ideas    = [[Possible world]]s{{·}}[[Modal realism]]{{·}}[[Counterfactuals]]{{·}}[[Counterpart theory]]{{·}}[[Principal principle]]{{·}}[[Humean supervenience]]{{·}}[[Lewis signaling game]]{{·}}The [[endurantism]]–[[perdurantism]] distinction<br>[[Descriptive-causal theory of reference]]<ref>Stefano Gattei, ''Thomas Kuhn's 'Linguistic Turn' and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism: Incommensurability, Rationality and the Search for Truth'', Ashgate Publishing, 2012, p. 122 n. 232.</ref>{{·}}''[[De se]]''<br>Qualitative vs quantitative parsimony<ref>"On Quantitative and Qualitative Parsimony" by Maciej Sendłak, ''Metaphilosophy'' '''49'''(1–2):153–166 (2018).</ref><br>[[Ramsey–Lewis method]]<br>Gunk<ref>[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lewis-metaphysics/ "David Lewis's Metaphysics"]</ref><br>Ontological innocence<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10670-015-9762-x | doi=10.1007/s10670-015-9762-x | title=An Argument for the Ontological Innocence of Mereology | date=2016 | last1=French | first1=Rohan | journal=Erkenntnis | volume=81 | issue=4 | pages=683–704 | doi-access=free }}</ref><br>[[Centered world]]|doctoral_advisor = [[Willard Van Orman Quine]]
|academic_advisors = [[Donald Cary Williams]]<ref>{{Cite journal|title=A Life in Philosophy|first=Nicholas|last=Wolterstorff|journal=Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association|volume=81|pages=93–106|number=2| date=November 2007 |jstor=27653995}}</ref><br/>
[[Iris Murdoch]]<ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/david-lewis/|title = The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|chapter = David Lewis|year = 2021|publisher = Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University}}</ref>
|doctoral_students = [[Robert Brandom]]<br>[[Peter Railton]]<br>[[J. David Velleman]]
|spouse=Stephanie Lewis (m. 1965–2001)
}}

'''David Kellogg Lewis''' (September 28, 1941– October 14, 2001) was an American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at [[UCLA]] and then at [[Princeton University]] from 1970 until his death. He is closely associated with [[Australia]], whose [[Australian philosophy|philosophical community]] he visited almost annually for more than 30 years.

Lewis made significant contributions in [[philosophy of mind]], [[philosophy of probability]], [[epistemology]], [[philosophical logic]], [[aesthetics]], [[philosophy of mathematics]], [[philosophy of time]] and [[philosophy of science]]. In most of these fields he is considered among the most important figures of recent decades. Lewis is most famous for his work in [[metaphysics]], [[philosophy of language]] and [[semantics]], in which his books ''On the Plurality of Worlds'' (1986) and ''Counterfactuals'' (1973) are considered classics. His works on the [[logic]] and semantics of [[counterfactual conditional]]s are broadly used by philosophers and linguists along with a competing account from [[Robert Stalnaker]]; together the Stalnaker–Lewis theory of counterfactuals has become perhaps the most pervasive and influential account of its type in the philosophical and linguistic literature. His [[metaphysics]] incorporated seminal contributions to quantified [[modal logic]], the development of [[counterpart theory]], counterfactual [[Causality|causation]], and the position called "Humean [[supervenience]]". Most comprehensively in ''On the Plurality of Worlds'', Lewis defended [[modal realism]]: the view that [[possible world]]s exist as [[Abstract and concrete|concrete]] entities, and that our world is one among many equally real possible ones. However he notes that our world is actualized.