Imagining Irreality

Nicholas Rescher surveys and analyzes the different kinds of unreal possibilities and nonexistent objects, tying together all the ways in which this area has been approached by philosophers. As he surveys the field and the kinds of unreality, he also makes a sustained argument against the philosophical fashion for dealing with nonexistent possible worlds as though they were authentic objects. The author holds that, while we may discuss possibilities, we ought not to accord them ontological status. The possibility of existence of certain sort of world is not the existence of a possible world of a certain sort.