Correct Conceivability and its Role in the Epistemology of Modality

Les Principes Métaphysiques (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The starting point of this paper is an argument to the conclusion that the definition of metaphysical possibility in terms of correct conceivability, conceivability informed by knowledge of relevant essences, found in Rosen (2006) is equivalent to a version of the essentialist definition of metaphysical necessity. This argument appears to show that correct conceivability is a notion of conceivability by name only and is therefore of no interest to epistemologists of modality. In this paper, I present the equivalence argument, explain the idealizing assumptions involved in it and sketch a version of the conceivability approach which weakens these assumptions in order to show that the notion of correct conceivability can still play a specific limited role in the epistemology of modality.

Links

PhilArchive

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Conceivability, Imagination and Modal Knowledge.M. Oreste Fiocco - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2):364–380.
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.
Knowledge of objective modality.Margot Strohminger & Juhani Yli-Vakkuri - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (5):1155-1175.
The Epistemology of Modality.Anand Vaidya - 2007 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Conceivability and defeasible modal justification.Heimir Geirsson - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 122 (3):279-304.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-03-20

Downloads
368 (#49,116)

6 months
74 (#52,813)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Robert Michels
Universidade de Lisboa

Citations of this work

On the Contingency of Universalism.Claudio Calosi - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (5):1997-2011.
On the Contingency of Universalism.Claudio Calosi - 2021 - Erkenntnis 88 (5):1-15.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Does conceivability entail possibility.David J. Chalmers - 2002 - In Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford University Press. pp. 145--200.
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.
Essence and modality.Kit Fine - 1994 - Philosophical Perspectives 8 (Logic and Language):1-16.
Naming and Necessity.S. Kripke - 1972 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 45 (4):665-666.
Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - Critica 17 (49):69-71.

View all 56 references / Add more references