Knowing how things might have been

Synthese (Suppl 8):1-19 (2018)
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Abstract

I know that I could have been where you are right now and that you could have been where I am right now, but that neither of us could have been turnips or natural numbers. This knowledge of metaphysical modality stands in need of explanation. I will offer an account based on our knowledge of the natures, or essencess, of things. I will argue that essences need not be viewed as metaphysically bizarre entities; that we can conceptualise and refer to essences; and that we can gain knowledge of them. We can know about which properties are, and which properties are not, essential to a given entity. This knowledge of essence offers a route to knowledge of the ways those entities must be or could be.

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Mark Jago
Nottingham University

Citations of this work

Superexplanations for counterfactual knowledge.Antonella Mallozzi - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (4):1315-1337.
The Epistemology of Modality.Antonella Mallozzi, Michael Wallner & Anand Vaidya - 2021 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Pricean reflection.John Bengson, Terence Cuneo & Russ Shafer-Landau - 2022 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (4):744-761.
Ontology Generator.Alik Pelman - 2023 - Metaphysica 24 (1):109-128.

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Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Does conceivability entail possibility.David J. Chalmers - 2002 - In Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford University Press. pp. 145--200.
A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1969 - Harmondsworth,: Penguin Books. Edited by Ernest Campbell Mossner.
The Philosophy of Philosophy.Timothy Williamson - 2007 - Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

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