Conceivability, Essence, and Haecceities

Abstract

This essay aims to redress the contention that epistemic possibility cannot be a guide to the principles of modal metaphysics. I introduce a novel epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics. I argue that the interaction between the two-dimensional framework and the mereological parthood relation, which is super-rigid, enables epistemic possibilities and truthmakers with regard to parthood to be a guide to its metaphysical profile. I specify, further, a two-dimensional formula encoding the relation between the epistemic possibility and verification of essential properties obtaining and their metaphysical possibility or verification. I then generalize the approach to haecceitistic properties, and examine the Julius Caesar problem as a test case.

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

  • Only published works are available at libraries.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-08-15

Downloads
607 (#30,695)

6 months
107 (#49,324)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
The character of consciousness.David John Chalmers - 2010 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. Quine - 1951 - [Longmans, Green].
Vagueness.Timothy Williamson - 1996 - New York: Routledge.
Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction.Gideon Rosen - 2010 - In Bob Hale & Aviv Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: metaphysics, logic, and epistemology. qnew York: Oxford University Press. pp. 109-135.

View all 66 references / Add more references