There are two doctrines for which Quine is particularly well known: the doctrine of ontological commitment and the inscrutability thesis—the thesis that reference and quantification are inscrutable. At first glance, the two doctrines are squarely at odds. If there is no fact of the matter as to what our expressions refer to, then it would appear that no determinate commitments can be read off of our best theories. We argue here that the appearance of a clash between the two doctrines (...) is illusory. The reason that there is no real conflict is not simply that in determining our theories’ ontological commitments we naturally rely on our home language but also (and more importantly) that ontological commitment is not intimately tied to objectual quantification and a reference-first approach to language. Or so we will argue. We conclude with a new inscrutability argument which rests on the observation that the notion of objectual quantification, when properly cashed out, deflates. (shrink)

Is the world internally connected by a web of necessary connections or is everything loose and independent? Followers of David Hume accept the latter by upholding Hume’s Dictum, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Roughly put, anything can coexist with anything else, and anything can fail to coexist with anything else. Hume put it like this: “There is no object which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves.” Since Hume’s (...) day, Hume’s Dictum has played a major role in philosophy, especially in contemporary metaphysics. In ruling out necessary connections, Hume’s Dictum implies that causal relations and the laws of nature are contingent. It makes other demands on our metaphysics of science as well; for example, it places restrictions on our metaphysics of counterfactuals, dispositions, and explanation. The principle has applications in other areas too. Hume’s Dictum places constraints on our theories of abstract objects and moral properties. For example, Hume’s Dictum rules out the view that moral properties are distinct from, but necessarily connected to, non-moral properties. While Hume’s Dictum is a prominent principle in metaphysics, few Humeans have defended the principle at length. It is assumed more often than it is argued for. As a result, Hume’s Dictum no longer enjoys the reputation it once did. It’s common to hear complaints about the lack of arguments in support of Hume’s Dictum. Moreover, philosophers are increasingly willing to defend views that are at odds with Hume’s Dictum. A striking example of this is the recent explosion of interest in views that take causal relations and the laws of nature to be necessary. Humeans can no longer afford to be complacent. An extended defense of Hume’s Dictum is called for, and that’s what this dissertation aims to offer. This dissertation has three parts. In the first part, I lay out some preliminaries and offer a precise formulation of Hume’s Dictum. In the second part, I develop three arguments in favor of Hume’s Dictum. In the final part, I defend Hume’s Dictum against objections. (shrink)

A world is trivial if it makes every proposition true all at once. Such a world is impossible, an absurdity. Our world, we hope, is not an absurdity. It is important, nevertheless, for semantic and metaphysical theories that we be able to reason cogently about absurdities—if only to see that they are absurd. In this note we describe methods for ‘observing’ absurd objects like the trivial world without falling in to incoherence, using some basic techniques from modal logic. The goal (...) is to begin to locate the trivial world’s relative position in modal space; the outcome is that the less we assume about relative possibility, the more detail we can discern at the edge of reason. (shrink)

Theories of propositions as sets of truth-supporting circumstances are committed to the thesis that sentences or other representations true in all and only the same circumstances express the same proposition. Theories of propositions as complex, structured entities are not committed to this thesis. As a result, structured propositions can play a role in our theories of language and thought that sets of truth-supporting circumstances cannot play. To illustrate this difference, I sketch a theory of transparent, non-deflationary truth consistent with some (...) theories of structured propositions, but inconsistent with any theory of propositions as sets of truth-supporting circumstances. (shrink)

There are lots of arguments for, or justifications of, mathematical theorems that make use of principles from physics. Do any of these constitute explanations? On the one hand, physical principles do not seem like they should be explanatorily relevant; on the other, some particular examples of physical justifications do look explanatory. In this article, I defend the idea that physical justifications can and do explain mathematical facts. 1 Physical Arguments for Mathematical Truths2 Preview3 Mathematical Facts4 Purity5 Doubts about Purity: I6 (...) Doubts about Purity: II7 How Physical Arguments Might Explain: I8 How Physical Arguments Might Explain: II9 Conclusion. (shrink)

Making sense of our reasoning in disputes about necessary truths requires admitting nonvacuous counterpossibles. One class of these is the counteressentials, which ask us to make contrary to fact suppositions about essences. A popular strategy in accounting for nonvacuous counterpossibles is to extend the standard possible worlds semantics for subjunctive conditionals by the addition of impossible worlds. A conditional A □-> C is then taken to be true if all of the nearest A worlds are C worlds. I argue that (...) a straightforward extension of the standard possible worlds semantics to impossible worlds does not result in a viable account of counteressentials and propose an alternative covering law semantics for counteressentials. (shrink)

Widespread causal overdetermination is often levied as an objection to nonreductive theories of minds and objects. In response, nonreductive metaphysicians have argued that the type of overdetermination generated by their theories is different from the sorts of coincidental cases involving multiple rock-throwers, and thus not problematic. This paper pushes back. I argue that attention to differences between types of overdetermination discharges very few explanatory burdens, and that overdetermination is a bigger problem for the nonreductive metaphysician than previously thought.

What I shall do in this paper is to propose an analysis of ‘Agent P tries to A’ in terms of a subjunctive conditional, that avoids some of the problems that beset most alternative accounts of trying, which I call ‘referential views’. They are so-named because on these alternative accounts, ‘P tries to A’ entails that there is a trying to A by P, and therefore the expression ‘P’s trying to A’ can occur in the subject of a sentence and (...) be used to refer to a particular, namely an act or event of trying. A conditional account such as mine avoids having to answer questions about those alleged particulars, for example their location and their causal relation to physical actions, or alternatively their identity to physical actions. In brief, the analysis I propose eschews any need to quantify over any sort of trying particulars. I both clarify the proposal and deal with five possible objections to it: metaphysically impossible actions: cases of finking and reverse-cycle finking; the empirical emptiness of preventers and blockers; proximate intentions and trying; and alleged explanatory loss. (shrink)

To solve the problem of counterpossibles, many philosophers have been arguing that one needs to invoke impossible worlds. This extension of the ontology of modality should save the analysis of counterfactuals from being insensitive to the problem of counterpossibles. Since theories of impossible worlds are extensions of original accounts of modalities, it is worth stressing that proper analyses of counterpossibles should not weaken the latter.In this paper I argue that these theories of impossible wolrds, which are based on D. Lewis' (...) modal realism - Extended Modal Realism and Hybrid Modal Realism - might be consider as either an unattractive for modal realists or insufficient for analyzing counterpossibles. (shrink)

Drawing on different suggestions from the literature, we outline a unified metaphysical framework, labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM), combining Meinongian themes with a non-standard modal ontology. The MMM approach is based on (1) a comprehension principle (CP) for objects in unrestricted, but qualified form, and (2) the employment of an ontology of impossible worlds, besides possible ones. In §§1–2, we introduce the classical Meinongian metaphysics and consider two famous Russellian criticisms, namely (a) the charge of inconsistency and (b) the (...) claim that naïve Meinongianism allows one to prove that anything exists. In §3, we have impossible worlds enter the stage and provide independent justification for their use. In §4, we introduce our revised comprehension principle: our CP has no restriction on the (sets of) properties that can characterize objects, but parameterizes them to worlds, therefore having modality explicitly built into it. In §5, we propose an application of the MMM apparatus to fictional objects and defend the naturalness of our treatment against alternative approaches. Finally, in §6, we consider David Lewis’ notorious objection to impossibilia, and provide a reply to it by resorting to an ersatz account of worlds. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson has argued against descriptivism about modality, which starts from the idea that modal statements serve to track features of the world and that these features explain the truth-values of modal claims. Thomasson objects that descriptivists cannot satisfactorily explain how modal features fit into the naturalistic picture of the world and that they cannot account for our apparent capacity to acquire modal knowledge. On Thomasson’s alternative to descriptivism (called ‘normativism’), the function of modal claims is to facilitate communication about (...) certain semantic rules. I argue that it is not obvious that the semantic rules that Thomasson takes to be expressed by modal truths really exist. Moreover, I defend a specific version of descriptivism – essentialism – against Thomasson’s objections. Essential truths play a central role in the best explanations of many facts about the world. That includes the explanations delivered by our best scientific theories once these theories are correctly interpreted philosophically. In this way, essences earn their keep in a naturalistic view of the world. Furthermore, the abductive methods by which we confirm our explanatory theories also support certain theses about essences. This allows essentialists to explain knowledge of essences and modal knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I support a hybrid view regarding the metaphysics of worlds. I endorse Lewisian Modal Realism for possible worlds (LMR). My aim is to come up with a hybrid account of impossible worlds that provides all the plenitude of impossibilities for all fine-grained intentional contents. I raise several challenges for such a plenitudinous hybrid theory. My version of hybrid modal realism builds impossible worlds as set-theoretic constructions out of genuine individuals and sets of them, that is, as set-theoretic (...) constructions from parts and sets of parts of genuine Lewisian worlds. _Structured worlds_ are defined as sets of tuples: structured entities built out of Lewisian ‘raw material’. These structured worlds are ersatz worlds, some of which are impossible. I claim that propositions must be sets of worlds rather than members of sets. Once the construction is in place, I evaluate the proposal and show that my hybrid account is able to supply a plenitude of impossibilities and thus giving the resources to make all the hyperintensional distinctions we are looking for, whilst remaining Lewisian-conservative. (shrink)

Standard theories of epistemic possibility analyze this relation in terms of knowledge, entailment, or probability. These theories are mistaken. Here, I present counterexamples to the standard theories and defend a new theory: that a proposition is epistemically possible on a body of evidence just in case that evidence supports that if the proposition were true, then the evidence might exist. In addition to avoiding the problems of the standard views, this new theory captures good reasoning about epistemic possibilities and matches (...) intuitive judgments in a wide range of cases, giving us good reason to accept it. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to compare three alternative formal reconstructions of van Inwagen’s famous argument for incompatibilism. In the first part of my paper, I examine van Inwagen’s own reconstruction within a propositional modal logic. I point out that, due to the expressive limitations of his propositional modal logic, van Inwagen is unable to argue directly (that is, within his formal framework) for incompatibilism. In the second part of my paper, I suggest to reconstruct van Inwagen’s argument within (...) a first-order predicate logic. I show, however, that even though this reconstruction is not susceptible to the same objection, this reconstruction can be shown to be inconsistent (given van Inwagen’s own assumptions). At the end of my paper, I suggest to reconstruct van Inwagen’s argument within a quantified counterfactual logic with propositional quantifiers. I show that within this formal framework van Inwagen would not only be able to argue directly for incompatibilism, he would also be able to argue for crucial assumptions of his argument. (shrink)

Counterpossibles are counterfactuals that involve some metaphysical impossibility. Modal normativism is a non-descriptivist account of metaphysical necessity and possibility according to which modal claims, e.g. ‘necessarily, all bachelors are unmarried’, do not function as descriptive claims about the modal nature of reality but function as normative illustrations of constitutive rules and permissions that govern the use of ordinary non-modal vocabulary, e.g. ‘bachelor’. In this paper, I assume modal normativism and develop a novel account of counterpossibles and claims about metaphysical similarity (...) between possible and impossible worlds. I argue that considerations of metaphysical similarity between various impossible worlds and the actual world only require us to tacitly consider how the actual constitutive rules that govern the use of our terms change in order to accommodate the description of some hypothetical impossible scenario. I then argue for my account by raising worries for alternative epistemic and realist accounts of counterpossibles and showing how my account avoids those worries. (shrink)

Absences, i.e., agential omissions and forbearances, but also ‘natural’ negative states and events beyond the sphere of human agency, seem to be part and parcel of the real world. Yet, it is exactly the putative reality of absences that strikes many philosophers as utterly mysterious, if not entirely unintelligible. As a promising approach towards solving the problem of real absences, I wish to explore the idea that absences are latent potentialities. To this end, I shall investigate what potentialities are, what (...) kinds of potentiality exist, and what it means for a potentiality to remain latent. I will also discuss whether the framework of latent potentiality is able to meet the extensional constraints imposed on the theory of absences by our intuitions about the reach of negative acts and events, i.e., whether latent potentialities can account for all real absences. (shrink)

In this critical notice of Kment's _Modality and Explanatory Reasoning_, we focus on Kment’s arguments for impossible worlds and on a key part of his discussion of the interactions between modality and explanation – the analogy that he draws between scientific and metaphysical explanation.

The aim of this paper is to show why the theories of impossible worlds do not fully solve the problem of counterpossibles, but merely shift it. Moreover, by making a distinction between two types of languages, we will show that some expectations about proper theory of counterfactuals might be too great.

The aim of this paper is to point out the limitations of Hybrid Modal Realism as a general theory of modalities, i.e. one that gives an analysis of possibilities as well as impossibilities. To do so we will firstly sketch the goals that theories of impossible worlds should achieve. Secondly we will briefly present the two most popular accounts of impossibilities—Extended Modal Realism and Extended Ersatzism. We will focus on the aspects of both theories which became the motivation for a (...) hybrid view. In the last part of this paper we will analyze Francesco Berto’s Hybrid Modal Realism and present reasons why this account is an insufficient tool for analyzing impossibilities. (shrink)

Much seems to be at stake in metaphysical questions about, for example, God, free will or morality. One thing that could be at stake is the value of the universe we inhabit—how good or bad it is. We can think of competing philosophical positions as describing possibilities, ways the world might turn out to be, and to which value can be assigned. When, for example, people hope that God exists, or fear that we do not possess free will, they express (...) attitudes towards these possibilities, attitudes that presuppose answers to questions about their comparative value. My aim in this paper is to distinguish these evaluative questions from related questions with which they can be confused, to identify structural constraints on their proper pursuit, and to address objections to their very coherence. Answers to such evaluative questions offer one measure of the importance of philosophical disputes. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic account of the metaphysically important distinction between haecceitistic properties, such as being David Lewis or being acquainted with David Lewis, and qualitative properties, such as being red or being acquainted with a famous philosopher. I first argue that this distinction is hyperintensional, that is, that cointensional properties can differ in whether they are qualitative. Then I develop an analysis of the qualitative/haecceitistic distinction according to which haecceitistic properties are relational in (...) a certain sense. I argue that this analysis can capture the hyperintensionality of the qualitative/haecceitistic distinction and is generally in accordance with the use of the notion of a qualitative property in philosophical debates. (shrink)

Jonathan Schaffer argues against a necessary connection between properties and laws. He takes this to be a question of what possible worlds we ought to countenance in our best theories of modality, counterfactuals, etc. In doing so, he unfairly rigs the game in favor of contingentism. I argue that the necessitarian can resist Schaffer’s conclusion while accepting his key premise that our best theories of modality, counterfactuals, etc. require a very wide range of things called ‘possible worlds’. However, the necessitarian (...) can and should insist that, in many cases, these worlds are not metaphysically possible. I will further argue that, having taken such a stance, the necessitarian has additional resources to respond to Schaffer’s other arguments against the view. (shrink)

There has been much discussion of the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects. In this paper I reconsider the debate by using the notion of grounding, or non-causal dependence. First of all, I investigate what proponents of the indispensability argument should say about the grounding of relations between physical objects and mathematical ones. This reveals some resources which nominalists are entitled to use. Making use of these resources, I present a neglected but promising response to the indispensability argument—a (...) liberalized version of Field’s response—and I discuss its significance. I argue that if it succeeds, it provides a new refutation of the indispensability argument; and that, even if it fails, its failure may bolster some of the fictionalist responses to the indispensability argument already under discussion. In addition, I use grounding to reply to a recent challenge to these responses. (shrink)

Let us call a statement of the form ‘If A was, is, or will be the case, then C was, is, or will be the case’ an indicative conditional. And let us call a statement of the form ‘If A had been, were, or were to be the case, then C would have been, would be, or would come to be the case’ a subjunctive, or counterfactual, conditional.

This paper deals with generalisations of modally based criteria for determining whether a given property is essential to an individual to the case of generic essences. These criteria usually presuppose extensionally individuated properties. The limitations of their generalisations are demonstrated using the case of the necessarily empty individual property and the necessarily empty individual office. I do not present a novel stance on the discussion of individual essences. The novelty of this paper lies in its claim that none of these (...) criteria can be generalised to generic essences. (shrink)

Since our capacities and methods of cognizing reality merely seem to tell us how things are but only within close limits how they could or must be, our claims to knowledge of mere possibilities and necessities raise the suspicion of exceptionalism: the capacities and methods used in developing these claims seem special compared to those involved in cognizing reality. One may be sceptical especially with regard to them, and there are doubts that they can be naturalistically explained. To avoid exceptionalism, (...) Timothy Williamson has proposed to reduce the epistemology of modality to the epistemology of everyday counterfactuals. There are doubts that the proposal succeeds. One objection is that the counterfactual-based epistemology fails to account for metaphysical necessities like the necessity of origin. For the account to cover such necessities, constitutive facts like the origin of a living being would have to form implicit constraints built into the capacity for everyday counterfactual reasoning. But is counterfactual reasoning indeed so constrained? I answer this question in the affirmative, presenting an epistemology of counterfactuals for modal epistemology to build on. The constraints gradually emerge by a broadly abductive process, starting from within everyday counterfactual reasoning. The process does not presuppose any independent knowledge of the constitutive status of certain facts. (shrink)

The paper deals with such a modification of genuine modal realism as to accommodate impossible worlds into its ontology. First of all, the theory of modal realism is presented. Next, several motivations for the acceptance of impossible worlds are adduced. Further, Lewis’s argument against impossible worlds is presented. It is argued that the argument can be weakened by rejection of one of its premises. Finally, two objections against the proposal are countered. Although my strategy accounts for the Opinion concerning the (...) impossible, it allegedly violates another Opinion which conceives the reality classical. It seems, however, that there is no no-question-begging reason to think that reality is classical. How can we know, after all, which logic describes reality? Without a definite answer to the question, the incredibility objection then simply collapses into a statement of a possibilist dogma. (shrink)

The last 15 years or so has seen the development of a fascinating new area of cognitive science: the cognitive science of religion (CSR). Scientists in this field aim to explain religious beliefs and various other religious human activities by appeal to basic cognitive structures that all humans possess. The CSR scientific theories raise an interesting philosophical question: do they somehow show that religious belief, more specifically belief in a god of some kind, is irrational? In this paper I investigate (...) this question and argue that CSR does not show that belief in god is irrational. (shrink)

This paper aims to introduce Meinongian Abstractionism (MA), i.e. a view on the metaphysics of truthmaking and modality. This approach is based on the notion of objectives—one of the key elements of Alexius Meinong’s Theory of Objects. In the light of it, worlds are interpreted in terms of sets of subsistent and non-subsistent objectives. This—along with Meinong’s characterization of objectives—provides a ground for possible as well as impossible worlds. One of the consequences of Meinongain Abstractionism is a reformulation of the (...) relation of truthmaking in modal terms. Importantly, this reformulation avoids the problem of too-coarse grained analysis of truthmakers. This makes MA a metaphysically–oriented supporter of the so-called ‘hyperintensional revolution.’. (shrink)

Celem tego artykułu było wykazanie, że ortodoksyjna analiza kontrmożliwych okresów warunkowych prowadzi do niepokojącej konsekwencji. Jest nią niemożność odróżnienia poszczególnych, z konieczności fałszywych teorii. Problem ten opiera się w dużej mierze na związku pomiędzy okresami warunkowymi oraz analizą wyrażeń zawierających operator opowieści. Nie musi to oznaczać, że zwolennik analizy ortodoksyjnej nie może dostarczyć alternatywnego sformułowania różnic pomiędzy teoriami z konieczności fałszywymi. Tym niemniej, nie może on tego dokonać poprzez użycie okresów warunkowych. Te natomiast – jak wskazują zarówno filozofowie oraz psycholodzy (...) rozwoju poznawczego – stanowią naturalny środek wyrazu wnioskowania o konsekwencjach zajścia tego, co faktycznie nie zaszło. Niezależnie od tego, czy jest to konsekwencja zajścia czysto możliwego, czy niemożliwego stanu rzeczy. Podczas gdy analizy prezentowane w ramach podejścia nieortodoksyjnego dostarczają wyjaśnienia tego zjawiska, stanowisko ortodoksyjne nakazuje podważenie moż- liwości takich rozumowań. Stąd można uznać, że w kwestii sporu o adekwatną analizę okresów warunkowych przewaga znajduje się po stronie nieortodoksyjnej. (shrink)

A new version of the ontological argument for the existence of God is outlined and examined. After giving a brief account of some traditional ontological arguments for the existence of God, where their defects are identified, it is explained how this new argument is built upon their foundations and surmounts their defects. In particular, this version uses the resources of impossible worlds to plug the common escape route from standard modal versions of the ontological argument. After outlining the nature of (...) impossible worlds, and motivating the need for positing them, the new argument is delineated and its premises justified. It is taken for granted that the argument cannot be sound, since it would prove too much. However, its premises are all plausible, and their denial promises to have significant ramifications. Several intuitive lines of objections are then explored in order to illuminate their shortcomings. The puzzle that the argument poses is therefore not whether the argument is sound, for it clearly cannot be. Rather, it is to place pressure on its plausible premises, so some plausible account of how the argument fails can be identified, and that the devising of such an account promises to be insightful. In the process, we should gain an improved understanding of how such ontological arguments work. (shrink)

Any worlds semantics for intentionality has to provide a plenitudinous theory of impossibility: For any impossible proposition, it should provide a world where it is true. Hence, also any semantics for impossibility statements that extends Lewis’s concretism about possible worlds should be plenitudinous. However, several such proposals for impossibilist semantics fail to accommodate two kinds of impossibility that, albeit not unheard of, have been largely neglected in the literature on impossible worlds, but that are bound to arise in the Lewisian (...) context. The proposals discussed here stop short of plenitude because they adhere to what Lewis occasionally referred to as ‘ontological truth’, as they lack the semantic ability to misrepresent ontological facts. The paper develops a framework for systematic misrepresentations on the basis of Mares’s situation-based account of impossible ‘worlds’, and which confines ‘ontological truth’ to possibility. It thus illustrates how a plenitude of impossibilities can be achieved. (shrink)

The aim of Modality and Explanatory Reasoning (MER) is to shed light on metaphysical necessity and the broader class of modal properties to which it belongs. This topic is approached with two goals: to develop a new and reductive analysis of modality, and to understand the purpose and origin of modal thought. I argue that a proper understanding of modality requires us to reconceptualize its relationship to causation and other forms of explanation such as grounding, a relation that connects metaphysically (...) fundamental facts to non-fundamental ones. While many philosophers have tried to give modal analyses of causation and explanation, often in counterfactual terms, I argue that we obtain a more plausible, explanatorily powerful and unified theory if we regard explanation as more fundamental than modality. The function of modal thought is to facilitate a common type of thought experiment – counterfactual reasoning – that allows us to investigate explanatory connections and which is closely related to the controlled experiments of empirical science. Necessity is defined in terms of explanation, and modal facts often reflect underlying facts about explanatory relationships. The study of modal facts is important for philosophy not because these facts are of much metaphysical interest in their own right, but largely because they provide evidence about explanatory connections. (shrink)

The paper clarifies and defends the orthodox view that counterfactual conditionals with impossible antecedents are vacuously true against recent criticisms. It argues that apparent counterexamples to orthodoxy result from uncritical reliance on a fallible heuristic used in the processing of conditionals. A comparison is developed between such counterpossibles and vacuously true universal generalizations.

We present an analysis of counterfactuals in terms of stories and combine it with an account similar to Walton’s account of truth in fiction to yield truth conditions for counterfactuals. We discuss unusual features of this account, and compare it to other main approaches. In particular, we argue that our analysis succeeds in accounting for counterpossibles and counterfactuals with true antecedents while the other two main approaches fail, and we give reasons for thinking that it is important to have an (...) adequate account of these two areas. (shrink)

According to a popular ‘explanationist’ argument for moral or mathematical realism the best explanation of some phenomena are moral or mathematical, and this implies the relevant form of realism. One popular way to resist the premiss of such arguments is to hold that any supposed explanation provided by moral or mathematical properties is in fact provided only by the non-moral or non-mathematical grounds of those properties. Many realists have responded to this objection by urging that the explanations provided by the (...) higher-level, moral and mathematical, properties are informative in a way in which their supposed replacements are not, and that this is because moral and mathematical properties are multiply realizable. This chapter responds to this manoeuvre by proposing a way in which moral and mathematical explanations might preserve the distinctive import that multiple realizability brings, without committing those who accept them to the existence of moral and mathematical properties. (shrink)

We explore a ‘Neo-Cartesian’ account of divine ultimacy that raises the concept of God to its ultimate level of abstraction so that we can do away with even the question of his existence. Our starting point is God’s relation to the logical and metaphysical order of reality and the views of Descartes and Leibniz on this topic. While Descartes held the seemingly bizarre view that the eternal truths are freely created by God, Leibniz stands for the mainstream view that the (...) eternal truths are grounded in God’s nature. We argue that the implausibility of Descartes’ doctrine stems mainly from the assumption that there is a non-epistemic notion of absolute necessity that constitutes the ultimate court of appeal for all modal questions and that this assumption is questionable. We also question the assumption that God’s ultimacy merely requires that all reality be grounded in God in the sense of mere explanation, so that it suffices if the necessary truths are grounded in God’s nature but not in God’s will. This will lead us to a reassessment of Descartes’ position. In the final and main part of the paper, we push Descartes’ doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths to its ‘logical’ conclusion with the aim of getting to a novel conception of ‘God.’. (shrink)

Building on the pioneer work of Lycan (1988, 1991a and b, 1994) and Yagisawa (1988), this paper aims to set out in a comprehensive way the case for the view that Lewis' analyses of modality in terms of quantification over worlds and counterparts fail to be genuinely reductive. This involves bringing together elements of the case which have hitherto remained unconnected, motivating some of those elements in new and more decisive ways, and bolstering them by considering a range of objections (...) that have been levelled against them (including recent ones by Stalnaker and Divers). The paper proceeds as follows. Section 1 introduces Lewis' analyses of de dicto and de re modality. Section 2 argues that, as deployed by Lewis, the notion of ‘world’ is modal in nature. This is because the analyses he proposes are extensionally adequate only if he takes ‘world’ to mean possible-as-opposed-to-impossible world. An important response to this charge is simply to deny that there are impossible worlds. Section 3 considers and rejects Lewis' argument for that claim, while section 4 argues that a prima facie case can be made for the claim that Lewis is in fact committed to the existence of impossible worlds. (shrink)

A counterpossible is a counterfactual whose antecedent is impossible. The vacuity thesis says all counterpossibles are true solely because their antecedents are impossible. Recently, some have rejected the vacuity thesis by citing purported non-vacuous counterpossibles in science. One limitation of this work, however, is that it is not grounded in experimental data. Do scientists actually reason non-vacuously about counterpossibles? If so, what is their basis for doing so? We presented biologists (N = 86) with two counterfactual formulations of a well-known (...) model in biology, the antecedents of which contain what many philosophers would characterize as a metaphysical impossibility. Participants consistently judged one counterfactual to be true, the other to be false, and they explained that they formed these judgments based on what they perceived to be the mathematical relationship between the antecedent and consequent. Moreover, we found no relationship between participants’ judgments about the (im)possibility of the antecedent and whether they judged a counterfactual to be true or false. These are the first experimental results on counterpossibles in science with which we are familiar. We present a modal semantics that can capture these judgments, and we deal with a host of potential objections that a defender of the vacuity thesis might make. (shrink)

I argue that beliefs about what appears possible are justified in much the same way as beliefs about what appears actual. I do so by chisholming, and then modalizing, the epistemic principle associated with phenomenal conservatism. The principle is tested against a number of examples, and it gives the intuitively correct results. I conclude by considering how it can be used to defend two controversial modal arguments, a Cartesian argument for dualism and an ontological argument for the existence of God.

We argue that explanations appealing to logical impossibilities are genuine explanations. Our defense is based on a certain picture of impossibility. Namely, that there are impossibilities and that the impossibilities have structure. Assuming this broad picture of impossibility we defend the genuineness of explanations that appeal to logical impossibilities against three objections. First, that such explanations are at odds with the perceived conceptual connection between explanation and counterfactual dependence. Second, that there are no genuinely contrastive why-questions that involve logical impossibilities (...) and, third, that explanations appealing to logical impossibilities rule nothing out. (shrink)

Wright (In Gendler and Hawthorne (Eds.), Conceivability and possibility, 2002) rejects some dominant responses to Kripke’s modal argument against the mind-body identity theory, and instead he proposes a new response that draws on a certain understanding of counterpossibles. This paper offers some defensive remarks on behalf of Lewis’ objection to that argument, and it argues that Wright’s proposal fails to fully accommodate the conceivability intuitions, and that it is dialectically ineffective.

The aim of this paper is to argue in favor of the view that some counterpossibles are false. This is done indirectly by showing that accepting the opposite view, i.e., one that ascribes truth to each and every counterpossible, results in the claim that every necessarily false theory has exactly the same consequences. Accordingly, it is shown that taking every counterpossible to be true not only undermines the value of debates over various alternative theories and their consequences, but also puts (...) into question the very possibility of such debates. In order to explicate this thesis, the close bond between counterpossibles and the so-called story prefix is explored. A number of possible responses to this criticism are also presented, and it is argued that none of them address the main problem. (shrink)

According to the most popular theories, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents are vacuously true. Critiques of this view argue that contrary to this, we tend to consider only some of them true and others to be false. In his recent paper Timothy Williamson has ingeniously explained the motivations for the orthodox view and argued that although there are some heuristic reasons that may suggest the plausibility of the unorthodox view, they are fallible. The most important of Williamson’s arguments is that the (...) unorthodox interpretation is inconsistent with the heuristic assumption that supposedly motivates this very view. The aim of this paper is to consider Williamson’s critique and to support the unorthodox approach towards counterpossibles. In order to do so, we argue in favor of the modified version of the heuristic assumption. (shrink)

A mathematical model in science can be formulated as a counterfactual conditional, with the model’s assumptions in the antecedent and its predictions in the consequent. Interestingly, some of these models appear to have assumptions that are metaphysically impossible. Consider models in ecology that use differential equations to track the dynamics of some population of organisms. For the math to work, the model must assume that population size is a continuous quantity, despite that many organisms are necessarily discrete. This means our (...) counterfactual representation of the model can have an impossible antecedent, giving us a counterpossible. Analogous counterpossibles arise in other sciences, as we’ll see. According to a prominent view in counterfactual semantics, the vacuity thesis, all counterpossibles are vacuously true, that is, true merely because their antecedents are necessarily false. But some counterpossible formulations of differential equation models in science are not all vacuously true—some are non-vacuously true, and some are false. I go on to show how an alternative semantics, one that employs impossible worlds, can deliver this judgment. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years there have been a number of attempts to analyse the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties. This article discusses three leading attempts to analyse this distinction that don’t appeal to the notion of nat-uralness: the duplication analysis endorsed by G. E. Moore and David Lewis, Peter Vallentyne’s analysis in terms of contractions of possible worlds, and the analysis of Gene Witmer, William Butchard and Kelly Trogdon in terms of grounding.