Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Kripke’s (1963) model theoretic framework for analyzing modality embraces the Leibnizian conception of modality where necessity and possibility are analyzed as universal and existential quantification over a fixed-domain of entities. Reductionists that accept the Leibnizian framework, such as Lewis (1986), Adams (1974), Plantinga (1976), Armstrong (1989) and Rosen (1990), have attempted to provide distinct analyses of modality in terms of quantification over various kinds of entities, such as possible worlds, maximal consistent sets of propositions, maximal states of affairs, or fictional stories. By contrast, anti-reductionists, such as Shalkowski (1994), McGinn (2000), and Jubien (2009) have argued that the Leibnizian framework and reductionism about modality is not a feasible program. In this talk, I discuss recent work bearing on the debate over reductionism in the metaphysics of modality, in particular, Sider (2003), Kment (2006), Cameron (2009), and Jubien (2009). I argue against reductionism, and in favor primitivism about modality, the view that modality is a basic feature of reality that is not reducible to any non-modal notion. Following Jubien (2009), I endorse a property-based account of modality, where necessity and possibility are analyzed in terms of modal relations between properties, such as entailment. However, following, Peacocke (1998), a comprehensive account of the philosophy of modality will give both an appropriate picture of the metaphysics and epistemology of modality. Thus, moving beyond those that have defended anti-reductionism about modality, I raise the yet unexplored issue of what kind of epistemology of modality is plausible given an anti-reductionist account of modality. In the epistemology of modality I explore the relation between the epistemology of essence or constitutive facts to the epistemology of necessity and possibility. In particular, I discuss the role that the epistemology of a non-modal conception of essence, such as defended by Fine (1994), and constitutive facts plays in counterfactual accounts of modal knowledge, such as Kment (2006), and understanding-based accounts of modal knowledge, such as Peacocke (1998) & (2002). Finally, I close with a discussion of the need for an epistemology of modality that can account adequately for both basic and non-basic modal knowledge. Developing an idea from Roca-Royes (forthcoming), I argue that the epistemology of modality faces a dilemma of desiderata. On the one hand, an account of the epistemology of modality must be able to secure our knowledge of non-basic modal facts, but not at the cost of rendering incoherent basic modal knowledge. On the other hand, an account of the epistemology of modality must be able to secure knowledge of basic-modal facts without rendering our knowledge of non-basic modal facts impossible.  In relation to this dilemma I discuss whether or not the reliability of our modal intuitions from knowledge of basic modal facts to knowledge of non-basic modal facts can be captured via similarity between possible worlds, so that, for example, if w₁ is closer to the actual world than w₂, our intuitions about what is possible in w₁ are more reliable than they are in w₂.

Primary Bibliography:

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Armstrong, David. (1989). A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Cameron, Ross. (2009) What’s Metaphysical about Metaphysical Necessity?. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXXIX No. 1: 1-16.

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Kment, Boris. (2006). Counterfactuals and the Analysis of Necessity. Philosophical Perspectives 20: 237-302.

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Roca-Royes, Sonia. (forthcoming). Conceivability and De re Modal Knowledge. Nous.

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