Conceivability and possibility: some dilemmas for Humeans
نویسندگان
چکیده
منابع مشابه
Does Conceivability Entail Possibility? 1
There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim (about what can be known or conceived), from there to a modal claim (about what is possible or necessary), and f...
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Kripke (1980) famously separates the metaphysical and epistemic modal domains, with supposed necessary a posteriori identity statements such as ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’, appearing to create an irreconcilable gap between conceivability and possibility. In response to this problem, David Chalmers (2002, 2004a, 2006) uses two-dimensional modal semantics (2DS) to claim that conceivability entails p...
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Doubts about a maxim like Hume’s have a variety of historical sources. Some date back as far as Descartes’s claim that, since he can conceive himself in a purely mental condition, his essence is only to think. “How does it follow,” Arnauld asks, “from the fact that he is aware of nothing else belonging to his essence, that nothing else does in fact belong to it?” Others are as recent as the dis...
متن کاملFROM CONCEIVABILITY TO POSSIBILITY An Essay in Modal Epistemology
This study deals with the thesis that conceivability implies possibility. Confronted with alleged counterexamples to this thesis, some philosophers have turned to what may be called “idealized” or “more demanding” notions of conceivability. I argue that in turning to such notions, they have made the thesis useless to limited beings like us for attaining modal knowledge. However, in refusing to ...
متن کاملCausal overdetermination for Humeans?
The paper argues against systematic overdetermination being an acceptable solution to the problem of mental causation within a Humean counterfactual theory of causation. The truthmakers of the counterfactuals in question include laws of nature, and there are laws that support physical to physical counterfactuals, but no laws in the same sense that support mental to physical counterfactuals.
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ژورنال
عنوان ژورنال: Synthese
سال: 2017
ISSN: 0039-7857,1573-0964
DOI: 10.1007/s11229-017-1346-7