The claim that zombies are conceivable is a premise of one of the most important anti-physicalist arguments. Eric Marcus (2004) challenges that premise in two novel ways. He observes that conceiving of zombies would require imagining total subjective absence. And this, he argues, we cannot do. However, his argument turns on the assumption that absence is imaginable only against a background of ...

In Counterfactuals, David Lewis noticed that definite descriptions and conditionals display the same kind of non-monotonic behavior. We take his observation literally and suggest that if-clauses are, quite simply, definite descriptions of possible worlds (related ideas are developed in Bittner 2001). We depart from Lewis's analysis, however, in claiming that if-clauses, like Strawsonian definit...

This essay aims to redress the contention that epistemic possibility cannot be a guide to the principles of modal metaphysics. I argue that the interaction between the multi-dimensional intensional framework and intensional plural quantification enables epistemic possibilities to target the haecceitistic properties of individuals. I outline the elements of plural logic, and I specify, then, a m...

Our understanding of subjunctive conditionals has been greatly enhanced through the use of possible world semantics and, more precisely, by the idea that they involve variably strict quantification over possible worlds. I propose to extend this treatment to ceteris paribus conditionals – that is, conditionals that incorporate a ceteris paribus or ‘other things being equal’ clause. Although such...