Why conceptual competence won’t help the non-naturalist epistemologist

Abstract

Non-naturalist normative realists face an epistemological objection: They must explain how their preferred route of justification ensures a non-accidental connection between justified moral beliefs and the normative truths. One strategy for meeting this challenge begins by pointing out that we are semantically or conceptually competent in our use of the normative terms, and then argues that this competence guarantees the non-accidental truth of some of our first-order normative beliefs. In this paper, I argue against this strategy by illustrating that this competence based strategy undermines the non-naturalist’s ability to capture the robustly normative content of our moral beliefs.     

Putting modal metaphysics first

I propose that we approach the epistemology of modality by putting modal metaphysics first and, specifically, by investigating the metaphysics of essence. Following a prominent Neo-Aristotelian view, I hold that metaphysical necessity depends on the nature of things, namely their essences. I further clarify that essences are core properties having distinctive superexplanatory powers. In the case of natural kinds, which is my focus in the paper, superexplanatoriness is due to the fact that the essence of a kind is what causes all the many properties and behaviors that are typically shared by all the instances of the kind. Accordingly, we know what is necessarily true of kinds by knowing what is essential to them in the sense of actually playing such causal-explanatory roles. Modal reasoning aimed at discovering metaphysical necessity thus proceeds via essentialist deduction: we move from essentialist truths to reach necessary truths.

     

Lewisian Realism: Methodology,Epistemology, and Circularity

In this paper I argue that warrant for Lewis’ Modal Realism is unobtainable. I consider two familiar objections to Lewisian realism – the modal irrelevance objection and the epistemological objection – and argue that Lewis’ response to each is unsatisfactory because they presuppose claims that only the Lewisian realist will accept. Since, I argue, warrant for Lewisian realism can only be obtained if we have a response to each objection that does not presuppose the truth of Lewisian realism, this circularity is vicious. I end by contrasting Lewis’ methodology with Forrest’s in order to illustrate a rival method that does not fall victim to the objection I lay against Lewis.     

Essence and modal knowledge

During the last quarter of a century, a number of philosophers have become attracted to the idea that necessity can be analyzed in terms of a hyperintensional notion of essence. One challenge for proponents of this view is to give a plausible explanation of our modal knowledge. The goal of this paper is to develop a strategy for meeting this challenge. My approach rests on an account of modality that I developed in previous work, and which analyzes modal properties in terms of the notion of a metaphysical law (which is a generalization of the concept of an essential truth). I discuss what information about the metaphysical laws (including essential truths) is required for modal knowledge. Moreover, I describe two ways in which we might be able to acquire this information. The first way employs inference to the best explanation. The metaphysical laws, including the essential truths, play a crucial role in causal and grounding explanations and we can gain knowledge of these laws by abductive inferences from facts of which we have perceptual or a priori knowledge. The second way of gaining information about the metaphysical laws rests on knowledge that is partly constitutive of competence with the concepts that are needed to express the relevant information. Finally, I consider how knowledge of the metaphysical laws can be used to establish modal claims, paying special attention to the much-discussed connection between conceiving and possibility.

     

Epistemological Restraint—Revisited

THOMAS NAGEL has argued that 'true liberalism' excludes appeals to conceptions of the good in political argument. According to Nagel, liberalism's impartiality is grounded not in skepticism but, rather, in its commitment to 'epistemological restraint.' As he puts it, 'We accept a kind of epistemological division between the private and the public domains: in certain contexts I am constrained to consider my beliefs merely as beliefs rather than as truths, however convinced I may be that they are true , and that I know it.' Nagel's notion of epistemological restraint has been roundly criticized by perfectionist liberals and advocates of liberal neutrality alike. In fact, even Nagel has come to reject the epistemological argument—in part, because of the epistemological asymmetry that it presupposes. In this paper, I offer an answer to Nagel's critics, one that makes the notion of epistemological asymmetry coherent. In so doing, I show how to defend liberal neutrality without embracing skepticism. I structure the paper in the following way: Section II lays out the critique of epistemological restraint; Section III defends the coherence of this notion; and Section IV considers an objection to the analysis developed in Section III.     

How can we come to know metaphysical modal truths?

Those who aim to give an account of modal knowledge face two challenges: the integration challenge of reconciling an account of what is involved in knowing modal truths with a plausible story about how we can come to know them, and the reliability challenge of giving a plausible account of how we could have evolved a reliable capacity to acquire modal knowledge. I argue that recent counterfactual and dispositional accounts of modal knowledge cannot solve these problems regarding specifically metaphysical modal truths—leaving us with the threat of skepticism about large portions of metaphysics, and certain other areas of philosophy. I argue, however, that both of these problems look insuperable only if we assume that metaphysical modal discourse serves a describing or tracking function. If we adopt instead a normativist approach to metaphysical modal discourse, which sees the basic function of modal discourse as giving us perspicuous ways of conveying, reasoning with, and renegotiating semantic rules, the problems show up very differently. The modal normativist can give a plausible response to both of the classic problems of how we can come to know metaphysical modal truths.

     

Stalnaker on Mathematical Information

Robert Stalnaker has argued that mathematical information is information about the sentences and expressions of mathematics. I argue that this metalinguistic account is open to a variant of Alonzo Church's translation objection and that Stalnaker's attempt to get around this objection is not successful. If correct, this tells not only against Stalnaker's account of mathematical truths, but against any metalinguistic account of truths that are both necessary and informative.     

Truthmakers and modality

This paper attempts to locate, within an actualist ontology, truthmakers for modal truths: truths of the form <Possibly, p> or <Necessarily, p>. In Sect. 1 I motivate the demand for substantial truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 2 I criticise Armstrong’s account of truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 3 I examine essentialism and defend an account of what makes essentialist attributions true, but I argue that this does not solve the problem of modal truth in general. In Sect. 4 I discuss, and dismiss, a theistic account of the source of modal truth proposed by Alexander Pruss. In Sect. 5 I offer a means of (dis)solving the problem.     

Conceivability,inconceivability and cartesian modal epistemology

In various arguments, Descartes relies on the principles that conceivability implies possibility and that inconceivability implies impossibility. Those principles are in tension with another Cartesian view about the source of modality, i.e. the doctrine of the free creation of eternal truths. In this paper, I develop a ‘two-modality’ interpretation of the doctrine of eternal truths which resolves the tension and I discuss how the resulting modal epistemology can still be relevant for the contemporary discussion.     

Did Kant Conflate the Necessary and the A Priori?

It is commonly accepted by Kant scholars that Kant held that all necessary truths are a priori, and all a priori knowledge is knowledge of necessary truths. Against the prevailing interpretation, I argue that Kant was agnostic as to whether necessity and a priority are co‐extensive. I focus on three kinds of modality Kant implicitly distinguishes: formal possibility and necessity, empirical possibility and necessity, and noumenal possibility and necessity. Formal possibility is compatibility with the forms of experience; empirical possibility is compatibility with the causal powers of empirical objects; noumenal possibility is compatibility with the causal powers of things in themselves. Because we cannot know the causal powers of things in themselves, we cannot know what is noumenally necessary and what is noumenally contingent. Consequently, we cannot know whether noumenal necessity is co‐extensive with a priority. Therefore, for all we know, some a priori propositions are noumenally contingent, and some a posteriori propositions are noumenally necessary. Thus, contrary to the received interpretation, Kant distinguishes epistemological from metaphysical modality.     

Necessary Moral Truths and Theistic Metaethics

Theistic metaethics usually places one key restriction on the explanation of moral facts, namely: every moral fact must ultimately be explained by some fact about God. But the widely held belief that moral truths are necessary truths seems to undermine this claim. If a moral truth is necessary, then it seems like it neither needs nor has an explanation. Or so the objection typically goes. Recently, two proponents of theistic metaethics — William Lane Craig and Mark Murphy — have argued that this objection is flawed. They claim that even if a truth is necessary, it does not follow that it neither needs nor has an explanation. In this article, I challenge Craig and Murphy’s reasoning on three main grounds. First, I argue that the counterexamples they use to undermine the necessary truth objection to theistic metaethics are flawed. While they may provide some support for the notion that necessary truths can be explained, they do not provide support for the notion that necessary moral truths can be explained. Second, I argue that the principles of explanation that Murphy and Craig use to support theistic metaethics are either question-begging (in the case of Murphy) or improperly motivated (in the case of Craig). And third, I provide a general defence of the claim that necessary moral truths neither need nor have an explanation.     

Presentism and Actualism

Presentism, some say, is either the analytic triviality that the only things that exist now are ones that exist now or the obviously false claim that the only things that have ever existed or will are ones that exist now. I argue that the correct understanding of presentism is the latter and so understood the claim is not obviously false. To appreciate this one has to see presentism as strictly analogous to anti-Lewisean actualism. What this modal analogue makes evident is that singular tensed statements can have scope ambiguities and so can be thought of as true with the temporal operator represented by the tense read as having wide scope. Secondly, I argue that the analogy with the modal case also makes it clear that presentism must be understood as a thesis of the form: ‘the only things that have ever existed or ever will exist stand in relation R to this (present) utterance’, and is not a substantive topic for debate until relation R is characterized in non-temporal terms. However, despite the strict analogy, I argue that presentism may be a harder position to defend than actualism, since the truth-maker objection, properly interpreted, with Lewis, as based on a supervenience thesis, has more force as an objection to presentism since supervenience is itself a modal notion.

     

奎因对模态逻辑的批评

奎因对模态逻辑的批评包括：(i)因为模态语境是指称不透明的,所以对其量化纳入没有意义;(ii)一些关于必然真理的经验知识与关于必然性的语言学理论不相容;(iii)模态语境中的量化纳入承诺了“亚里士多德式的本质主义”。丘奇,克里普克和福雷斯达尔对奎因提出了批评。他们提出,模态构造应该是外延上不透明但指称上透明的。奎因式诉诸于模态环境指称不透明的批评,在不采用单称词项的模态逻辑中不成立。他对本质主义的批评引入了一种必然性,但这种必然性没有办法用语言陈述词项进行解释。通过对语言中名称使用的讨论,我们可以看出,有关包含名称的同一性陈述的真值的经验知识,和卡苏洛称之为“一般模态地位”的先验知识是相容的。既然奎因论证了真同一性陈述的必然真是逻辑真,而且所有逻辑真都遵循戴维森式的意义理论（另文讨论）,那么我们可以给出一个关于包含名称的同一性的真陈述的模态地位的先验知识的语言学理论。     

A Defense of the Kripkean Account of Logical Truth in First-Order Modal Logic

This paper responds to criticism of the Kripkean account of logical truth in first-order modal logic. The criticism, largely ignored in the literature, claims that when the box and diamond are interpreted as the logical modality operators, the Kripkean account is extensionally incorrect because it fails to reflect the fact that all sentences stating truths about what is logically possible are themselves logically necessary. I defend the Kripkean account by arguing that some true sentences about logical possibility are not logically necessary.     

Truthmaking and Fundamentality

I apply the notion of truthmaking to the topic of fundamentality by articulating a truthmaker theory of fundamentality according to which some truths are truth‐grounded in certain entities while the ones that don't stand in a metaphysical‐semantic relation to the truths that do. I motivate this view by critically discussing two problems with Ross Cameron's truthmaker theory of fundamentality. I then defend this view against Theodore Sider's objection that the truthmaking approach to fundamentality violates the purity constraint. Truthmaker theorists can have a trouble‐free theory of fundamentality.     

Using neural response properties to draw the distinction between modal and amodal representations

ABSTRACT

Barsalou has recently argued against the strategy of identifying amodal neural representations by using their cross-modal responses (i.e., their responses to stimuli from different modalities). I agree that there are indeed modal structures that satisfy this “cross-modal response” criterion (CM), such as distributed and conjunctive modal representations. However, I argue that we can distinguish between modal and amodal structures by looking into differences in their cross-modal responses. A component of a distributed cell assembly can be considered unimodal because its responses to stimuli from a given modality are stable, whereas its responses to stimuli from any other modality are not (i.e., these are lost within a short time, plausibly as a result of cell assembly dynamics). In turn, conjunctive modal representations, such as superior colliculus cells in charge of sensory integration, are multimodal because they have a stable response to stimuli from different modalities. Finally, some prefrontal cells constitute amodal representations because they exhibit what has been called ‘adaptive coding’. This implies that their responses to stimuli from any given modality can be lost when the context and task conditions are modified. We cannot assign them a modality because they have no stable relation with any input type.

Abbreviatons: CM: cross-modal response criterion; CCR: conjuntive cross-modal representations; fMRI: functional magnetic resonance imaging; MVPA: multivariate pattern analysis; pre-SMA: pre-supplementary motor area; PFC: prefrontal cortex; SC: superior colliculus; GWS: global workspace     

PRESENTISM, TRUTHMAKERS, AND GOD

The truthmaker objection to presentism (the view that only what exists now exists simpliciter ) is that it lacks sufficient metaphysical resources to ground truths about the past. In this paper I identify five constraints that an adequate presentist response must satisfy. In light of these constraints, I examine and reject responses by Bigelow, Keller, Crisp, and Bourne. Consideration of how these responses fail, however, points toward a proposal that works; one that posits God's memories as truthmakers for truths about the past. I conclude that presentists have, in the truthmaker objection, considerable incentive to endorse theism.     

Sensitivity Actually

A number of prominent epistemologists claim that the principle of sensitivity “play[s] a starring role in the solution to some important epistemological problems” (DeRose 2010: 161; also Nozick 1981). I argue that traditional sensitivity accounts fail to explain even the most basic data that are usually considered to constitute their primary motivation. To establish this result I develop Gettier and lottery cases involving necessary truths. Since beliefs in necessary truths are sensitive by default, the resulting cases give rise to a serious explanatory problem for the defenders of sensitivity accounts. It is furthermore argued that attempts to modally strengthen traditional sensitivity accounts to avoid the problem must appeal to a notion of safety—the primary competitor of sensitivity in the literature. The paper concludes that the explanatory virtues of sensitivity accounts are largely illusory. In the framework of modal epistemology, it is safety rather than sensitivity that does the heavy explanatory lifting with respect to Gettier cases, lottery examples, and other pertinent cases.     

Rethinking Sellars’ Myth of the Given: From the Epistemological to the Modal Relevance of Givenness in Kant and Hegel

ABSTRACT

Here, I pursue consequences, for the interpretation of Sellars’ critique of the ‘Myth of the Given’, of separating the modal significance that Kant attributed to empirical intuition from the epistemological role it also played for him. It is argued that Kant’s approach to modality in the Critique of Pure Reason can best be understood as a transcendental variation on Leibniz’s earlier ‘possibilist’ approach that treated the actual world as just one of a variety of possible alternative worlds. In this context, empirical intuitions seem to work like the mythical Givens subject to Sellars’ critique. This Kantian possibilism is then contrasted with an ‘actualist’ alternative approach to modality found in the contemporary work of Robert Stalnaker, but also recognizable in Hegel. In particular, the role of immediate perceptual judgments in Hegel is likened to that played by ‘witness statements’ in Robert Stalnaker’s attempt to distinguish the logic of judgments about the actual world from those about its alternate possibilities.     

Can Hardcore Actualism Validate S5?

Hardcore actualism (HA) grounds all modal truths in the concrete constituents of the actual world (see, e.g., Borghini and Williams (2008), Jacobs (2010), Vetter (2015)). I bolster HA, and elucidate the very nature of possibility (and necessity) according to HA, by considering if it can validate S5 modal logic. Interestingly, different considerations pull in different directions on this issue. To resolve the tension, we are forced to think hard about the nature of the hardcore actualist’s modal reality and how radically this departs from possible worlds orthodoxy. Once we achieve this departure, the prospects of a hardcore actualist validation of S5 look considerably brighter. This paper thus strengthens hardcore actualism by arguing that it can indeed validate S5–arguably the most popular logic of metaphysical modality–and, in the process, it elucidates the very nature of modality according to this revisionary, but very attractive, modal metaphysics.