David Lewis

David Lewis

I have in my possession a long letter from David Lewis replying to my paper “Modal Reality” (1981). Several years ago, I was contacted about this letter because no copy of it existed in Lewis’s files, but at that time I didn’t know where it was or even if it had survived. I came across it recently when I sorted through my old correspondence. If the executors still want it, I have it now. It is very characteristic. I had little contact with Lewis during his lifetime, though I read a fair amount of his stuff and treated him with respect when I saw him. I can’t say I was much impressed. He didn’t strike me as the epitome of intellectual honesty or personal warmth, and was quite careerist. He was never particularly friendly to me. More important, I never found him very persuasive, especially in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. He was clever but misguided. I remember liking his earlier work more, especially Convention and “General Semantics”. I just never got much out of his later stuff. I didn’t even read A Plurality of Worlds—far too doctrinaire. I find his current exalted status rather surprising (I wouldn’t say this about Saul Kripke). I think he answers to a certain image of what a successful American philosopher should look like.