But it's a complicated, inconsistent world, and one thing the war in Iraq showed is that clarity is overrated.
Given two worlds w1 and w2, a schematic world w1 ∩ w2 is a world at which all and only the states of affairs obtain, which obtain both at w1 and at w2. Dually, a "superposed" or inconsistent world w1 ∪ w2 is a world at which all and only the states of affairs obtain, which obtain at w1 or at w2.
So we can have distinct inconsistent world-books, taken as sets of mutually inconsistent propositions, representing intuitively distinct impossibilities.
Whereas Kripke's non-standard worlds required different truth conditions only for the modal operators, Rescher and Brandom's inconsistent worlds behave peculiarly with respect to conjunction.
Consequently, and not accidentally, it is quite common in the current literature both for and against dialetheism to straightforwardly speak of inconsistent objects, states of affairs, and entire inconsistent worlds.
For example, a contradiction (a statement of the form "p and not p") will be a sufficient condition for the truth of any statement unless the semantics for the logic in question allow the inclusion of inconsistent worlds (for more details, see logic: relevance, and for an account of relevance in terms of the idea of 'meaning containment' see chapter 1 of Brady 2006).
"Is England's rugby team the most inconsistent in world sport?" asks Gary Naylor.
The World Trade Organization has upheld provisions of a United States trade law against a European Union challenge that the law was inconsistent with world trade rules, the United States said.
The Commerce Department did say that it had "reasonable cause to believe or suspect" that the alleged subsidies were "inconsistent" with World Trade Organization rules.
Every year at Back to School Night, as I travel from room to room hearing half a dozen or more teachers recite their different sets of rules for their particular realms, I remember anew how capricious and inconsistent the world can look from those chairs with attached arm-desks.
But, she suggests, if we can conceive of it as being permissible, and as being impermissible, we have shown that we are able to conceive of two ethically inconsistent possible worlds.
