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- Nenad Miščević (2003). Explaining Modal Intuition. 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 (from Kant, through neo-wittgensteinians to T. Nagel and J. Pust), claim that causal explanation of intuitions and judgments undermines rational trust in them. They especially target causal explanation in terms of pre-established harmony between our mind, shaped by causal processes, and the underlying modal structure of reality. The paper argues against them. The argument builds upon the claim that the appeal to modal facts is indispensable for systematization and explanation of non-modal ones. Therefore, we should assume that modal facts exist and are not disjoint and isolated from actual facts. The modal structure of the universe intervenes in the non-modal reality. Causal processes indirectly carry information about deep modal structure. Any (reasonable candidate) causal explanation of our intuitional modal beliefs should start from this indirect contact with and information about modal facts. Therefore, if our intuitional modal beliefs are true and causally explainable (by a factual, non-modal explanans), they are true in virtue of the deep underlying modal structure. They are sensitive to modal reality and track it. We can come to know this fact, and thus strengthen our spontaneous trust in our modal intuitions.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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I address two related questions: first, what is the best theory of how objects have de re modal properties? Second, what is the best defence of essentialism given the variability of our modal intuitions? I critically discuss several theories of how objects have their de re modal properties and address the most threatening antiessentialist objection to essentialism: the variability of our modal intuitions. Drawing on linguistic treatments of vagueness and ambiguity, I show how essentialists can accommodate the variability of modal intuitions while holding that objects have their modal properties independently of contexts.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: informaworld.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: informaworld.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... I address two related questions: first, what is the best theory of how objects have de re modal properties? Second, what is the best defence of essentialism given the variability of our modal intuitions? I critically discuss several theories of how objects have their de re modal properties and address the most threatening antiessentialist objection to essentialism: the variability of our modal intuitions. Drawing on linguistic treatments of vagueness and ambiguity, I show how essentialists can accommodate the variability of modal intuitions while holding that objects have their modal properties independently of contexts.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... I address two related questions: first, what is the best theory of how objects have de re modal properties? Second, what is the best defense of essentialism given the variability of our modal intuitions? I critically discuss several theories of how objects have their de re modal properties and address the most threatening antiessentialist objection to essentialism: the variability of our modal intuitions. Drawing on linguistic treatments of vagueness and ambiguity, I show how essentialists can accommodate the variability of modal intuitions while holding that objects have their modal properties independently of contexts.
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| | Other links: phonline.org informaworld.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This paper introduces a multi-modal polymorphic type theory to model epistemic processes characterized by trust, defined as a second-order relation affecting the communication process between sources and a receiver. In this language, a set of senders is expressed by a modal prioritized context, whereas the receiver is formulated in terms of a contextually derived modal judgement. Introduction and elimination rules for modalities are based on the polymorphism of terms in the language. This leads to a multi-modal non-homogeneous version of a type theory, in which we show the embedding of the modal operators into standard group knowledge operators.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... What is it for a property to be dispositional? To answer this question, we can try appealing to the special relationship that dispositions appear to have with modal facts. This is the strategy of modal accounts of dispositionality, which have an important philosophical pedigree.1 For example, consider the following schemas, where for any ‘d’ that names a disposition, one can replace ‘M’ with a purely modal sentence: A1. Having d [a priori] entails M. A2. d is the modal property of being such that M. A3. d is the second-order property of having a property partly in virtue of which M.2 Corresponding to each schema there is a modal account of dispositions. According to what I will call consequentialism, dispositions can be distinguished by modal entailments like A1; according to modalism, dispositions are a special kind of modal property specified by A2; and according to second- orderism, dispositions are a special kind of second-order property specified by A3.
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| | Scholar | More options ... Modal realists should fashion their theory by postulating and taking seriously the modal equivalent of tense, or modal tense. This will give them a uniform way to respond to five different objections, one each by Skyrms, Quine, and Peacocke, and two by van Inwagen, and suggest a non-Lewisian path to modal realism.
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| | Other links: informaworld.com csun.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... numbers as in the following example ♦1,1♦1,2 2,3 5,4p We denote the set of formulas of this modal language by M L(k). For each modality type i, there will be an accessibility relation Ri. That is, an k-ary modal structure for the modal propositional language L will have the form..
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| | Scholar | More options ... Explaining intuitions in terms of "facts of our natural history" is compatible with rationally trusting them. This compatibilist view is defended in the present paper, focusing upon nomic and essentialist modal intuitions. The opposite, incompatibilist view alleges the following: If basic modal intuitions are due to our cognitive make-up or "imaginative habits" then the epistemologists are left with a mere non-rational feeling of compulsion on the side of the thinker. Intuitions then cannot inform us about modal reality. In contrast, the paper argues that there are several independent sources of justification which make the feeling of compulsion rational: the prima-facie and a priori ones come from the obviousness of our basic modal intuitions and our not being able to imagine things otherwise, others, a posteriori, from the epistemic success of these intuitions. Further, the general scheme of evolutionary learning is reliable, reliability is preserved in the resulting individual's cognitive make-up, and we can come to know this a posteriori. The a posteriori appeal to evolution thus plays a subsidiary role in justification, filling the remaining gap and removing the residual doubt. Explaining modal intuitions is compatible with moderate realism about modality itself.
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| | Other links: interscience.wiley.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Can different material objects have the same parts at all times at which they exist? This paper defends the possibility of such coincidence against the main argument to the contrary, the ‘Indiscernibility Argument’. According to this argument, the modal supervenes on the nonmodal, since, after all, the non-modal is what grounds the modal; hence, it would be utterly mysterious if two objects sharing all parts had different essential properties. The weakness of the argument becomes apparent once we understand how the modal is grounded in the nonmodal. By extending the ideas of combinatorialism so that we recombine haecceities as well as fundamental properties, we see how modal properties can be grounded in non-modal properties in a way that allows coincidence and yet also explains why there are differences in the modal properties of coinciding objects. Despite this, some de re modal facts are not grounded in the non-modal but instead are brute. However, although we cannot explain why a particular object has the basic modal properties it has, we can explain a closely related, semantic fact and, comparing the facts we can’t explain to more familiar brute facts, we understand why there should be no better explanation. As a result, we can see how coincidence is, after all, possible.
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| | Scholar | More options ... 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, antiexplanationists (from Kant, through neo-Wittgensteinians to T. Nagel and J. Pust), claim that causal explanation of intuitions and judgments undermines rational trust in them.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Nenad Miščević, Explaining modal intuition
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