Search Results

This introductory chapter presents an overview of the different topics discussed in the subsequent chapters. These include process reliabilism, evidentialism, viral epistemology, anti-luminosity argument, and modal epistemology.

This chapter argues that accepting modal normativism brings significant epistemological advantages. Those who aim to account for modal knowledge face 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 explaining how we could have evolved to have a reliable faculty for coming to know modal truths. Recent empiricist 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. However, by giving a different functional story, the modal normativist can develop a plausible response to the remaining versions of both of these classic problems for modal epistemology. Modal normativists can also respond to further worries parallel to those raised by Sharon Street’s evolutionary debunking arguments in meta-ethics.

Why do we tend to ascribe possibility to what we can imagine? One strategy for answering that question involves the thought that, just as sensory episodes often involve its seeming to us as though the world is certain ways, so imaginings involve its seeming to us that what we have imagined is possible. This chapter argues that while some imaginings do feature appearances of possibility, very many others do not; and it explores the broader relevance of its conclusions for modal epistemology.

This chapter develops a moderate modal rationalism. According to this moderate modal rationalism, knowledge of metaphysical possibility and necessity is available through sensitivity to the rational entailment relations between propositions. The imagination can be used to explore these rational entailment relations so as to discover whether a proposition is “conceivable” in the sense that it does not rationally entail a rational absurdity. Some metaphysically impossible propositions are conceivable in this way, but their metaphysical impossibility can be discovered nonetheless by noticing that they rationally entail some proposition about the actual world that is, in fact, false.

This chapter distinguishes two projects in modal epistemology—one about how we come to know modal truths, and one about why we have the ability so to come to know. It is suggested that the latter is amenable to an evolutionary treatment in terms of general capacities developed to evaluate quotidian modal claims. This approach is compared to a recent suggestion in a similar spirit by Christopher Hill and Timothy Williamson, emphasizing counterfactual conditionals instead of quotidian modals; it is argued that while there are some reasons to prefer the quotidian modals approach, there are none favoring the Hill/Williamson counterfactual approach. The chapter concludes with a suggestion that the remaining questions both approaches leave unanswered ought not to be too troubling.

The themes of ontology and modality are introduced. The introduction sketches two major strands of metaphysics from the last fifty years or so in which ontology and modality have been combined in particularly important ways, namely, in the worlds approach to modality, and the revival of essentialism. Also introduced are questions of modal ontology—whether and what things exist necessarily or contingently—and questions concerning the interaction of modal ontology and modal epistemology—what consequences do one’s views on modality and ontology have for a modal epistemology? Within this framework, the rest of the chapters of the book are introduced.

The epistemology of essence is a topic that has received relatively little attention, although there are signs that this is changing. The lack of literature engaging directly with the topic is probably partly due to the mystery surrounding the notion of essence itself, and partly due to the sheer difficulty of developing a plausible epistemology. The need for such an account is clear especially for those, like E. J. Lowe, who are committed to a broadly Aristotelian conception of essence, whereby essence plays an important theoretical role. In this chapter, our epistemic access to essence is examined in terms of the a posteriori vs. a priori distinction. The two main accounts to be contrasted are those of David S. Oderberg and E. J. Lowe.

Counterexample thought experiments (CTEs) play a prominent role in the ethics literature. A wide range of ethics CTEs have a distinctive feature: they feature forced choices with fixed outcomes. This feature matters because, according to a generally accepted understanding of CTEs’ role in philosophical methodology, CTEs work by presenting genuinely possible scenarios. This chapter argues that imagining CTEs gives us no reason to believe that forced choices with fixed outcomes are genuine possibilities. To provide data for theorizing, CTEs must thus describe more realistic scenarios: they cannot abstract away from the fact that choices have many possible outcomes. Good thought experiments will also promise no guarantees. This means that any ethical view that counts outcomes as ethically relevant will have to take seriously moral risk. This consideration must be built into the foundation of our ethical theorizing, not just added as an afterthought once we have crafted our ethical theories.

Theories of “divine illumination” were popular from St Augustine through the Middle Ages. Henry of Ghent is traditionally thought of as providing one of the last and most sophisticated theories of Divine Illumination. This chapter examines one of John Duns Scotus’s main arguments against Henry’s theory of Divine Illumination. The chapter reads Scotus as claiming that Henry’s theory aims, but fails, to avoid skepticism—the conclusion that we can’t have any knowledge on the basis of sensation. It shows how this argument can be understood formally on the basis of an analogy with modal logic, which Scotus explicitly calls attention to. The chapter argues that this way of understanding Scotus’s argument points toward some important refinements that contemporary anti-risk principles in epistemology will need to account for.

As Hume famously claimed, we are nowhere more free than in our imagination. While this feature of imagination suggests that imagination has a crucial role to play in modal epistemology, it also suggests that imagining cannot provide us with any non-modal knowledge about the world in which we live. This chapter rejects this latter suggestion. Instead it offers an account of “imagining under constraints,” providing a framework for showing when and how an imaginative project can play a justificatory role with respect to our beliefs about the world. That we can be free in our imaginings does not show that they must proceed unfettered; as is argued, our ability to constrain our imaginings in light of facts about the world enables us to learn from them. The important upshot is that imagination has considerably more epistemic significance than previously thought.