Conceivability, Essence, and Haecceities

Abstract

This essay aims to redress the contention that epistemic possibility cannot be a guide to the principles of modal metaphysics. I introduce a novel epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics. I argue that the interaction between the two-dimensional framework and the mereological parthood relation, which is super-rigid, enables epistemic possibilities and truthmakers with regard to parthood to be a guide to its metaphysical profile. I specify, further, a two-dimensional formula encoding the relation between the epistemic possibility and verification of essential properties obtaining and their metaphysical possibility or verification. I then generalize the approach to haecceitistic properties, and examine the Julius Caesar problem as a test case.

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References found in this work

Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
The character of consciousness.David John Chalmers - 2010 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. Quine - 1951 - [Longmans, Green].
Vagueness.Timothy Williamson - 1994 - New York: Routledge.
Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction.Gideon Rosen - 2010 - In Bob Hale & Aviv Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology. Oxford University Press. pp. 109-135.

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