Pub Date : 2020-07-23DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190098193.003.0009
Amie L. Thomasson
This chapter makes the case that modal normativism also brings significant methodological advantages. First, it can provide a much-needed justification of using intuitions, thought experiments, and a form of conceptual analysis, in answering metaphysical modal questions. Second, it provides a straightforward methodology for answering such questions—considered as “internal” questions—and gives reasons for thinking that some such questions are simply unanswerable. But such questions may also be addressed as external questions, where we are concerned not with what rules our terms do follow, but what rules they should follow, and what linguistic and conceptual schemes we should use. This gives us the means for understanding some debates about metaphysical modality as engaged in metalinguistic negotiation and conceptual engineering—and thereby preserving the idea that such debates may be deep and important.
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Pub Date : 2020-07-23DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190098193.003.0010
Amie L. Thomasson
The conclusion ties the work done here to the broader goals of demystifying and reorienting metaphysics. It aims to demystify metaphysics by showing that metaphysical questions that are well-formed and answerable can be answered in ways that require nothing more mysterious than conceptual and empirical work. It also aims to reorient metaphysics toward work on how our conceptual scheme does work, and on what linguistic or conceptual scheme we ought to use. The conclusion also aims to draw out the three threads that have been interwoven throughout this book: the neo-pragmatist functional pluralist idea that modal talk is non-descriptive, the deflationary meta-ontological “easy ontology” view, and the view that the rules of use for our terms are often open-textured and revisable. While these three views are separable in principle, together they form a stronger package, and exemplify an approach that may also prove useful in addressing other philosophical problems.
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"Amie L. Thomasson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190098193.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190098193.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"The conclusion ties the work done here to the broader goals of demystifying and reorienting metaphysics. It aims to demystify metaphysics by showing that metaphysical questions that are well-formed and answerable can be answered in ways that require nothing more mysterious than conceptual and empirical work. It also aims to reorient metaphysics toward work on how our conceptual scheme does work, and on what linguistic or conceptual scheme we ought to use. The conclusion also aims to draw out the three threads that have been interwoven throughout this book: the neo-pragmatist functional pluralist idea that modal talk is non-descriptive, the deflationary meta-ontological “easy ontology” view, and the view that the rules of use for our terms are often open-textured and revisable. While these three views are separable in principle, together they form a stronger package, and exemplify an approach that may also prove useful in addressing other philosophical problems.","PeriodicalId":120056,"journal":{"name":"Norms and Necessity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131787585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-23DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190098193.003.0008
Amie L. Thomasson
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.
{"title":"Epistemological Advantages","authors":"Amie L. Thomasson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190098193.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190098193.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":120056,"journal":{"name":"Norms and Necessity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127650196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-23DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190098193.003.0007
Amie L. Thomasson
This chapter aims to make clear the ontological consequences of adopting a modal normativist position. By combining normativism with the easy approach to ontology, we can see that modal normativism gives us a form of simple realism, according to which there are modal facts, properties, and even possible worlds, in the only sense that has sense. Such entities are not, however, “posited” as truthmakers that are supposed to “explain” what “makes our modal claims true.” But although the normativist accepts that there are modal facts and properties, the view also brings ontological advantages, avoiding ontological problems that plague traditional realist views, including placement problems and the grounding problem. The normativist view is also compared here to the forms of “classificatory conventionalism” advocated by Ross Cameron and Theodore Sider.
{"title":"Ontological Advantages","authors":"Amie L. Thomasson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190098193.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190098193.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter aims to make clear the ontological consequences of adopting a modal normativist position. By combining normativism with the easy approach to ontology, we can see that modal normativism gives us a form of simple realism, according to which there are modal facts, properties, and even possible worlds, in the only sense that has sense. Such entities are not, however, “posited” as truthmakers that are supposed to “explain” what “makes our modal claims true.” But although the normativist accepts that there are modal facts and properties, the view also brings ontological advantages, avoiding ontological problems that plague traditional realist views, including placement problems and the grounding problem. The normativist view is also compared here to the forms of “classificatory conventionalism” advocated by Ross Cameron and Theodore Sider.","PeriodicalId":120056,"journal":{"name":"Norms and Necessity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130576007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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