Essentialist Blindness would not preclude counterfactual knowledge

This paper does two things. First, it defends, against a potential threat to it, the claim that a capacity for essentialist knowledge should not be placed among the core capacities for counterfactual knowledge. Second, it assesses a consequence of that claim—or better: of the discussion by means of which I defend it—in relation to Kment's and Williamson's views on the relation between modality and counterfactuals

Mind-Independence and Modal Empiricism

The paper focuses on the Epistemic Challenge for mind-independent accounts of modality. The challenge can be formulated as an inconsistency problem among three premises and, therefore, any strategy to meet the challenge will require the negation of (at least) one of its premises. The aim of the paper is not to offer a positive solution to the challenge, but rather to argue for the claim that to follow a hybrid strategy is probably the best way to meet it. With some qualifications, reasons are given as to why empiricism should be the way to meet the challenge as far as de re modality is concerned, whereas rationalism might be the correct way of addressing it for the case of de dicto modality

How Things Might Have Been: Individuals, Kinds, and Essential Properties

Output Type: Book Revie

Rethinking origin essentialism (for artefacts)

The thesis that the material origins of artefacts are essential to them is highly intuitive, but in a flexible version: it is not exact match of material origins that is intuitively essential, but approximate match. After an in‐depth exploration of the theoretical options open to accommodate the flexible version, the paper ends up favouring the inflexible one

Modal Knowledge and Counterfactual Knowledge

The paper compares the suitability of two different epistemologies of counterfactuals—(EC) and (W)—to elucidate modal knowledge. I argue that, while both of them explain the data on our knowledge of counterfactuals, neither can subsume modal knowledge. (EC) would be available only to extreme haecceitists. Only (W)—Williamson’s epistemology—is compatible with all counterpossibles being true; something on which Williamson’s account relies. A first problem is that, in the absence of further data for (W) and against (EC), Williamson’s choice of (W) is objectionably biased. A second, deeper problem is that (W) cannot satisfactorily elucidate modal knowledge. Third, from a naturalistic perspective, the nature of this second problem favours (EC) against (W)

Rohbraugh and deRosset on the Necessity of Origin

In ‘A New Route to the Necessity of Origin’, Rohbraugh and deRosset offer an argu-ment for the Necessity of Origin appealing neither to Sufficiency of Origin nor to abranching-times model of necessity. What is doing the crucial work in their argu-ment is instead the thesis they name ‘Locality of Prevention’. In this response, we ob-ject that their argument is question-begging by showing, first, that the locality ofprevention thesis is not strong enough to satisfactorily derive from it the intendedconclusion, and, second, that the argument is not sound unless the Necessity of Origin is operating as an implicit premiss

Modality

Modality is a vast phenomenon. In fact, it is arguably a plurality of phenomena. Within it, one type of modality warrants distinctive interest in philosophy and, in particular, in metaphysics. In view of this, this Element has a first part devoted to modality as a general phenomenon, where different types of modalities are distinguished, and where the question of unification is raised. Following this, the second part is focused on metaphysical modality: the type of modality that is of distinctive interest in metaphysics, and thus for the series of this Element. In this second part, the overarching question is about the source of metaphysical modality, and the discussion here informs back, and is informed by, the question of unification from the first part. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core

Introducción a la modalidad

The paper is an introduciton to modality. It first explores the topic in its generality, surveying different kinds of modality and, foremost, explaining why are they different types of a same genus. It then focuses more deeply on metaphysical modaltiy. &nbsp

Concepts and the Epistemology of Essence

This paper is an exploration of the prospects of rationalist, concept‐based epistemologies of modality as far as essentialist and de re modal claims are concerned. I grant certain explanatory power to such epistemologies but, primarily, I identify their limitations. I first explore them in view of the (possible) existence of general as well as of singular modally loaded concepts and find their explanatory scope severely limited. Inspired by the abstractionist's concept‐and‐entitlement based hybrid model, the paper then explores a similarly hybrid strategy. The outcome of this exploration is that, regardless of its explanatory scope, it would be a misnomer to describe such hybrid view as concept‐based. The result generalizes

Genuine Modal Realism, the Humean thesis and advanced modalizing

The paper argues that Lewis’ Genuine Modal Realism, in taking the plurality of worlds to be necessarily the way it is, implies the existence of necessary connections of the sort that contradicts the Humean thesis that Lewis endorses. By endorsing, pace Divers, a non-redundancy interpretation of advanced modalizing, we gain the means to exactly state what these connections amount to