Dissertation

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Anti-realist Approaches to Modality

This project explores anti-realist approaches to modality. I propose a novel anti-realist account that can potentially unify different kinds of modality such as metaphysical modality, nomic modality, and feasibility. I then discuss empirical evidence for or against the existing anti-realist accounts, with the goal of empirically evaluating my own account.

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Publications

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Alethic Modality is Deontic (forthcoming at Mind & Language).

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Papers in progress

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The Conditional Necessity Account of Feasibility (R&R at Australasian Journal of Philosophy).

Abstract: Feasibility is a kind of practical modality. It is taken to constrain moral obligation in the sense that we only ought to do what is feasible for us. According to the existing accounts, to say that something is feasible for us is either to say that it is possible for us to do it or to say that if we try to do it, we are likely to succeed. I argue that both options are in tension with the principle that we ought to do the best that is feasible for us. To save this plausible principle, I argue that feasibility should be taken as a kind of necessity of success given trying. I then propose to understand the sense of necessity in terms of the best system of the facts relevant for the feasibility assessment task.

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The Best System Account of Metaphysical Modality (under review).

Abstract: I argue that Lewis’s best system analysis can be used to explain not only nomic modality but metaphysical modality as well.  I show how we can change Lewis’s original account to fit with the new explanandum. Then I argue that the proposed account can indeed explain all main types of metaphysically necessary truths including logical and mathematical truths, analytic truths, grounding truths, truths about essence, and identity truths. The result is a novel, plausible reductive account of metaphysical modality in addition to the traditional reductivist approaches such as possible world account and combinatorialism. 

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