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Summary One approach to modal epistemology is to argue that our intuitions about modality are the grounds for our beliefs about what is possible and necessary. It is because one has an intuition that P is possible, that one is entitled to believe that P is possible. Of course, intuitions are fallible. The central question is why should we take them to be reliable.
Key works The central proponent of the intuition approach is Bealer 2002. In a series of papers he has argued that we have reliable intuitions about modality and that these intuitions are the grounds for knowledge of metaphysical modality. There are those that are skeptical about intuitions as sources of evidence, and then there are those that are skeptical about the epistemology of modality. Skepticism about modal epistemology can be found in Van Inwagen 1998. Skepticism about intuitions can be found in Williamson 2007.
Introductions A key introduction is Vaidya 2007
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  1. On a Priori Knowledge of Necessity.Juhani Yli-Vakkuri & Margot Strohminger - 2018
    The idea that the epistemology of modality is in some sense a priori is a popular one, but it has turned out to be difficult to precisify in a way that does not expose it to decisive counterexamples. The most common precisifications follow Kripke’s suggestion that cases of necessary a posteriori truth that can be known a priori to be necessary if true ‘may give a clue to a general characterization of a posteriori knowledge of necessary truths’. The idea is (...)
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  2. Modal Skepticism and Its Applications.Barthuly Joshua - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Notre Dame
    This dissertation is an examination of the epistemology of modality and its application to debates in metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. I first give a novel argument for a moderate modal skepticism. The argument is a generalization and improvement upon van Inwagen (1998)'s influential argument for a close cousin to my thesis. It also brings to bear highly-relevant, recent results in mainstream epistemology that have surprisingly gone overlooked in the otherwise thoroughgoing developments in modal epistemology, a sub-discipline that has (...)
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  3. Pundits and Possibilities: Philosophers Are Not Modal Experts.Daniel Kilov & Caroline Hendy - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (1):824-843.
    Wilfrid Sellars [1962: 1] described philosophy as an attempt to ‘understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term’. But it is distinctive of philosophy that many of us are interested not only in how the world is but in ways that it could be. That is, philosophy is concerned with facts about modality. Some of the most important arguments in philosophy hinge on modal premises, and philosophers have (...)
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  4. What the Metaverse has to do with Physics.Ilexa Yardley - 2021 - Https://Medium.Com/the-Circular-Theory/.
  5. Finding the Bounds of Machery’s Critique. [REVIEW]Mikio Akagi - 2019 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (4):584-591.
  6. Alien worlds, alien laws, and the Humean conceivability argument.Lok-Chi Chan, David Braddon-Mitchell & Andrew J. Latham - 2019 - Ratio 33 (1):1-13.
    Monism is our name for a range of views according to which the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is intimate and necessary, or on which there are no categorical bases at all. In contrast, Dualist views hold that the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is distant and contingent. This paper is a defence of Monism against an influential conceivability argument in favour of Dualism. The argument suggests that the apparent possibility of causal behaviour coming apart from (...)
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  7. Modal Insurance: Probabilities, Risk, and Degrees of Luck.Evan Malone - 2019 - Southwest Philosophical Studies 41.
    Many widely divergent accounts of luck have been offered or employed in discussing an equally wide range of philosophical topics. We should, then, expect to find some unified philosophical conception of luck of which moral luck, epistemic luck, and luck egalitarianism are species. One of the attempts to provide such an account is that offered by Duncan Pritchard, which he refers to as the modal account. This view commits us to calling an event lucky when it obtains in this world, (...)
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  8. Conceivability and possibility: some dilemmas for Humeans.Francesco Berto & Tom Schoonen - 2018 - Synthese 195 (6):2697-2715.
    The Humean view that conceivability entails possibility can be criticized via input from cognitive psychology. A mainstream view here has it that there are two candidate codings for mental representations (one of them being, according to some, reducible to the other): the linguistic and the pictorial, the difference between the two consisting in the degree of arbitrariness of the representation relation. If the conceivability of P at issue for Humeans involves the having of a linguistic mental representation, then it is (...)
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  9. Нет ничего невозможного. (Контекстуальный реализм и модальности.).Francois-Igor Pris - 2018 - Конференция ИФ НАНБ. Минск 1:133-135.
  10. Epistemic Modals and Alternative Possibilities.John Turri - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (5):1063-1084.
    Indicative judgments pertain to what is true. Epistemic modal judgments pertain to what must or might be true relative to a body of information. A standard view is that epistemic modals implicitly quantify over alternative possibilities, or ways things could turn out. On this view, a proposition must be true just in case it is true in all the possibilities consistent with the available information, and a proposition might be true just in case it is true in at least one (...)
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  11. Les intuitions rationnelles sont-elles des intuitions modales?Pierre Saint-Germier - 2017 - Philosophiques 44 (1):49-71.
    Pierre Saint-Germier | : Nous discutons la thèse, acceptée par de nombreux théoriciens des intuitions rationnelles, selon laquelle ces dernières s’accompagnent d’une apparence de nécessité. L’existence d’intuitions rationnelles ayant pour objet des propositions contingentes jette un doute sur l’adéquation de cette thèse. Le problème peut trouver une solution dans le cadre d’une théorie faillibiliste des intuitions rationnelles, pourvu que l’on admette des illusions modales inéliminables. En nous appuyant sur une explication bidimensionnelle de l’a priori contingent, nous défendons une solution différente (...)
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  12. “Filling in”, thought experiments and intuitions.Michael J. Shaffer - 2017 - Episteme 14 (2):255-262.
    Recently Timothy Williamson (2007) has argued that characterizations of the standard (i.e. intuition-based) philosophical practice of philosophical analysis are misguided because of the erroneous manner in which this practice has been understood. In doing so he implies that experimental critiques of the reliability of intuition are based on this misunderstanding of philosophical methodology and so have little or no bearing on actual philosophical practice or results. His main point is that the orthodox understanding of philosophical methodology is incorrect in that (...)
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  13. The Epistemology of Modality.Margot Strohminger & Juhani Yli-Vakkuri - 2017 - Analysis 77 (4):825-838.
    This article surveys recent developments in the epistemology of modality.
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  14. Theory Selection in Modal Epistemology.Robert William Fischer - 2015 - American Philosophical Quarterly 52 (4):381-395.
    Accounts of modal knowledge are many and varied. How should we choose between them? I propose that we employ inference to the best explanation, and I suggest that there are three desiderata that we should use to rank hypotheses: conservatism, simplicity, and the ability to handle disagreement. After examining these desiderata, I contend that they can’t be used to justify belief in the modal epistemology that fares best, but that they can justify our accepting it in an epistemically significant sense. (...)
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  15. The Role of Intuition in Metaphysics.M. J. García-Encinas - 2015 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 34 (3):79-99.
    In this paper I consider the possibility of a kind of a priori cognition that serves the purposes of metaphysics, given that metaphysics involves the search for modal knowledge. Necessary or, better, modal knowledge is a priori; so metaphysical knowledge is likewise a priori. Here I argue that intuition is the route to modal knowledge in metaphysics, and I insist that conceivability or knowledge of conceptual truths does not lead towards the modal realm of metaphysics.
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  16. Essentialism: Metaphysical or Psychological?Moti Mizrahi - 2014 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 14 (1):65-72.
    In this paper, I argue that Psychological Essentialism (PE), the view that essences are a heuristic or mental shortcut, is a better explanation for modal intuitions than Metaphysical Essentialism (ME), the view that objects have essences, or more precisely, that (at least some) objects have (at least some) essential properties. If this is correct, then the mere fact that we have modal intuitions is not a strong reason to believe that objects have essential properties.
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  17. Herman Cappelen - Philosophy Without Intuitions. [REVIEW]Sebastian J. Mueller - 2013 - Zeitschrift für Philosophische Literatur 1 (1):35-43.
    This is a critical discussion of Herman Cappelen's "Philosophy Without Intuitions".
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  18. Intuition, Thought Experiments, and the A Priori.Albert Casullo - 2012 - In Essays on A Priori Knowledge and Justification. New York, NY, USA: pp. 233-250.
    My purpose in this paper is to examine the role of intuition in conceptual analysis and to assess whether that role can be parlayed into a plausible defense of a priori knowledge. The focus of my investigation is George Bealer’s attempt to provide such a defense. I argue that Bealer’s account of intuition and its evidential status faces three problems. I go on to examine the two primary arguments that Bealer offers against empiricism: the Starting Points Argument and the Argument (...)
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  19. Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology. [REVIEW]Peter Kung - 2012 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (4):806-809.
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  20. The hardness of the iconic must: can Peirce’s existential graphs assist modal epistemology.Catherine Legg - 2012 - Philosophia Mathematica 20 (1):1-24.
    Charles Peirce's diagrammatic logic — the Existential Graphs — is presented as a tool for illuminating how we know necessity, in answer to Benacerraf's famous challenge that most ‘semantics for mathematics’ do not ‘fit an acceptable epistemology’. It is suggested that necessary reasoning is in essence a recognition that a certain structure has the particular structure that it has. This means that, contra Hume and his contemporary heirs, necessity is observable. One just needs to pay attention, not merely to individual (...)
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  21. Review of: Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy. [REVIEW]D. Gene Witmer - 2011 - Metaphilosophy 42 (1-2):155-160.
  22. Intuitions and relativity.Kirk Ludwig - 2010 - Philosophical Psychology 23 (4):427-445.
    I address a criticism of the use of thought experiments in conceptual analysis advanced on the basis of the survey method of so-called experimental philosophy. The criticism holds that surveys show that intuitions are relative to cultures in a way that undermines the claim that intuition-based investigation yields any objective answer to philosophical questions. The crucial question is what intuitions are as philosophers have been interested in them. To answer this question we look at the role of intuitions in philosophical (...)
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  23. What is Hume's Dictum, and why believe it?Jessica Wilson - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (3):595 - 637.
    Hume's Dictum (HD) says, roughly and typically, that there are no metaphysically necessary connections between distinct, intrinsically typed, entities. HD plays an influential role in metaphysical debate, both in constructing theories and in assessing them. One should ask of such an influential thesis: why believe it? Proponents do not accept Hume's arguments for his dictum, nor do they provide their own; however, some have suggested either that HD is analytic or that it is synthetic a priori (that is: motivated by (...)
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  24. Defending Contingentism in Metaphysics.Kristie Miller - 2009 - Dialectica 63 (1):23-49.
    Metaphysics is supposed to tell us about the metaphysical nature of our world: under what conditions composition occurs; how objects persist through time; whether properties are universals or tropes. It is near orthodoxy that whichever of these sorts of metaphysical claims is true is necessarily true. This paper looks at the debate between that orthodox view and a recently emerging view that claims like these are contingent, by focusing on the metaphysical debate between monists and pluralists about concrete particulars. This (...)
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  25. Empirical metaphysics: the role of intuitions about possible cases in philosophy.J. L. Dowell - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 140 (1):19-46.
    Frank Jackson has argued that only if we have a priori knowledge of the extension-fixers for many of our terms can we vindicate the methodological practice of relying on intuitions to decide between philosophical theories. While there has been much discussion of Jackson’s claim that we have such knowledge, there has been comparatively little discussion of this most powerful argument for that claim. Here I defend an alternative explanation of our intuitions about possible cases, one that does not rely on (...)
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  26. Gedankenexperimente in der Philosophie.Daniel Cohnitz & Sören Häggqvist - 2007 - In M. Staschok (ed.), Abstrakt - Exakt - Obskur: Philosophische Gedankenexperimente & Kunst. Logos.
    Sie halten gerade ein Buch in Ihren H¨anden. Vielleicht liegt es auch auf dem Tisch vor Ihnen, w¨ahrend Sie diese Worte lesen. Aber woher wissen Sie, dass Sie ein Buch vor sich haben? Nun, Sie sehen es nat¨urlich mit eigenen Augen. Vermutlich f¨uhlen Sie auch das Gewicht des Buches, das gegen Ihre Haut dr¨uckt, w¨ahrend sie es in H¨anden halten, und h¨oren das Rascheln der Seiten, wenn Sie umbl¨attern. Dar¨uber hinaus sind Sie wach und (so vermuten wir mal) einigermaßen n¨uchtern, (...)
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  27. Conceivability and defeasible modal justification.Heimir Geirsson - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 122 (3):279-304.
    This paper advances the thesis that we can justifiably believe philosophically interesting possibility statements. The first part of the paper critically discusses van Inwagens skeptical arguments while at the same time laying some of the foundation for a positive view. The second part of the paper advances a view of conceivability in terms of imaginability, where imaginging can be propositional, pictorial, or a combination of the two, and argues that conceivability can, and often does, provide us with justified beliefs of (...)
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  28. Law necessitarianism and the importance of being intuitive.Daniel Z. Korman - 2005 - Philosophical Quarterly 55 (221):649–657.
    The counterintuitive implications of law necessitarianism pose a far more serious threat than its proponents recognize. Law necessitarians are committed to scientific essentialism, the thesis that there are metaphysically necessary truths which can be known only a posteriori. The most frequently cited arguments for this position rely on modal intuitions. Rejection of intuition thus threatens to undermine it. I consider ways in which law necessitarians might try to defend scientific essentialism without invoking intuition. I then consider ways in which law (...)
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  29. The origins of modal error.George Bealer - 2004 - Dialectica 58 (1):11-42.
    Modal intuitions are the primary source of modal knowledge but also of modal error. According to the theory of modal error in this paper, modal intuitions retain their evidential force in spite of their fallibility, and erroneous modal intuitions are in principle identifiable and eliminable by subjecting our intuitions to a priori dialectic. After an inventory of standard sources of modal error, two further sources are examined in detail. The first source - namely, the failure to distinguish between metaphysical possibility (...)
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  30. Imagining possibilities.Dominic Gregory - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (2):327–348.
    Kripkean examples of necessary a posteriori truths clearly provide a challenge to attempts to connect facts about possibility to facts about what people can conceive. The paper argues for a general principle connecting imaginability under certain special circumstances to possibility; it also discusses some of the issues raised by the resulting position.
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  31. On The Impossibility of Nonactual Epistemic Possibilities.Ori Simchen - 2004 - Journal of Philosophy 101 (10):527-554.
    A problem inherited from Kripke is the reconciliation of commitments to various necessities with conflicting intuitions of contingency, intuitions that things "might have turned out otherwise." Kripke's reconciliation strategy is to say that while it is necessary that X is Y, and so impossible for X not to be Y, it is nevertheless epistemically possible for X not to be Y. But what are nonactual epistemic possibilities? Several answers are considered and it is concluded that scenarios adduced to explain away (...)
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  32. Explaining modal intuition.Nenad Miščević - 2003 - Acta Analytica 18 (1-2):5-41.
    The paper defends causal explanationism concerning our modal intuitions and judgments, and, in particular, the following claims. If a causally explainable mirroring or “pre-established harmony” between our mind and modal reality obtains, we are justified in believing it does. We do not hold our modal beliefs compulsively and blindly but with full subjective and objective justification. Therefore, causal explanation of our modal beliefs does not undermine rational trust in them. Explanation and trust support each other. In contrast, anti-explanationists, claim that (...)
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  33. Modal Epistemology and the Rationalist Renaissance.George Bealer - 2002 - In Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford University Press. pp. 71-125.
    The paper begins with a clarification of the notions of intuition (and, in particular, modal intuition), modal error, conceivability, metaphysical possibility, and epistemic possibility. It is argued that two-dimensionalism is the wrong framework for modal epistemology and that a certain nonreductionist approach to the theory of concepts and propositions is required instead. Finally, there is an examination of moderate rationalism’s impact on modal arguments in the philosophy of mind -- for example, Yablo’s disembodiment argument and Chalmers’s zombie argument. A less (...)
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  34. The Role of Necessity in Empirical Knowledge.Jennifer Ruth Nagel - 2000 - Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh
    Does empirical knowledge of contingent matters presuppose knowledge of necessity? According to many contemporary epistemologists, the answer is 'no'; indeed, many are skeptical that there is such a thing as knowledge of necessity at all. Some would argue that there simply is no such thing as necessity; others would argue that our awareness of necessity should not count as knowledge because necessity is not something we discover in the world, but something we project onto it. My dissertation, however, aims to (...)
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  35. Metaphysical necessity: Understanding, truth and epistemology.C. Peacocke - 1997 - Mind 106 (423):521-574.
    This paper presents an account of the understanding of statements involving metaphysical modality, together with dovetailing theories of their truth conditions and epistemology. The account makes modal truth an objective matter, whilst avoiding both Lewisian modal realism and mind-dependent or expressivist treatments of the truth conditions of modal sentences. The theory proceeds by formulating constraints a world-description must meet if it is to represent a genuine possibility. Modal truth is fixed by the totality of the constraints. To understand modal discourse (...)
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  36. Naturalism and Modal Reasoning.Nenad Mišćević - 1994 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 49 (1):149-173.
    A naturalistic theory of modal intuitions and modal reasoning inspired by Hintikka's theorizing should start from the principle that advanced modal reasoning has its roots in commonsense intuitions. It is proposed that the naturalist can rely on the assumption of uniformity: the same set of basic principles is used in reasoning about actual and counterfactual dependencies - modal cognition is conservative. In the most primitive cases the difference between a model of an actual situation and of a merely possible one (...)
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  37. Is Conceivability a Guide to Possibility?Stephen Yablo - 1993 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1):1-42.
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  38. The Real Distinction Between Mind and Body.Stephen Yablo - 1990 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 16:149-201.
    ….it [is] wholly irrational to regard as doubtful matters that are perceived clearly and distinctly by the understanding in its purity, on account of mere prejudices of the senses and hypotheses in which there is an element of the unknown.Descartes, Geometrical Exposition of the MeditationsSubstance dualism, once a main preoccupation of Western metaphysics, has fallen strangely out of view; today’s mental/physical dualisms are dualisms of fact, property, or event. So if someone claims to find a difference between minds and bodies (...)
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  39. How empirical is contemporary logical empiricism?L. Jonathan Cohen - 1975 - Philosophia 5 (3):299-317.
    There is a certain dominant tradition, school, ambiance or intellectual community in contemporary philosophy of science which can conveniently be labelled logical empiricism. Now a curious and (I believe) hitherto unremarked change occurred in the accepted methodology of logical empiricism shortly after the end of World War II. Before then accepted forms of argument for philosophical theses about the logic, analysis, or rational reconstruction of science fell into two main categories. Some arguments appealed to familiar or historically attestable facts about (...)
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  40. Of the Light of Nature, Ed. By J. Brown.Nathaniel Culverwell, John Brown & William Dillingham - 1857
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