Abstract

I know that I could have been where you are right now and that you could have been where I am right now, but that neither of us could have been turnips or natural numbers. This knowledge of metaphysical modality stands in need of explanation. I will offer an account based on our knowledge of the natures, or essencess, of things. I will argue that essences need not be viewed as metaphysically bizarre entities; that we can conceptualise and refer to essences; and that we can gain knowledge of them. We can know about which properties are, and which properties are not, essential to a given entity. This knowledge of essence offers a route to knowledge of the ways those entities must be or could be.

Highlights

  • Metaphysical necessity is supposed to lie somewhere between those necessities generated by scientific law and those generated by logic and conceptual relations alone

  • I will offer an explanation of how we come by knowledge of metaphysical modality: of truths of the form ‘it is necessary that A’, ‘it is possible that A’, and ‘it is contingent whether A’

  • The epistemological story takes up the task of explaining how we get from knowledge of essence to knowledge of metaphysical modality

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Summary

Introduction

Metaphysical necessity is supposed to lie somewhere between those necessities generated by scientific law (the ‘nomic’ necessities) and those generated by logic and conceptual relations alone. Their being metaphysically necessary, rather than contingent, seems to make no difference to our experienced world This would seem to make knowledge of those truths hard, perhaps impossible, to come by. I will offer an explanation of how we come by knowledge of metaphysical modality: of truths of the form ‘it is necessary that A’, ‘it is possible that A’, and ‘it is contingent whether A’. (I’ll use ‘nature’ and ‘essence’ as synonyms.) And we know how things might have been because we know that those things have natures which, in combination, don’t rule out their being those ways On this view, the metaphysics and epistemology of modality have a common source, in the natures of things. The epistemological story takes up the task of explaining how we get from knowledge of essence to knowledge of metaphysical modality

Conceivability and counterfactual knowledge
Modal reduction to essence
Access to essences
Knowing essences
From knowing essences to modal knowledge
Evaluating the essence approach
Conclusion
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