Modality and tense: Philosophical papers
Oxford, 2006
Abstract
This book is collection of the the author’s previously published papers on the philosophy of modality and tense and it also includes three unpublished papers. The author provides an exposition and defence of certain positions for which he is well-known: the intelligibility of modality de re; the primitiveness of the modal; and the primacy of the actual over the possible. He also argues for some less familiar positions: the existence of distinctive forms of natural and normative necessity, not reducible to any form of metaphysical necessity; the need to make a distinction between the worldly and unworldly, analogous to the distinction between the tensed and the tenseless; and the viability of a nonstandard form of realism about tense, which recognizes the tensed character of reality without conceding there is any privileged standpoint from which it is to be viewed.
Quotes from this work
[T]he much-vaunted analogy with natural kinds is of little help, and actually stands in the way of seeing what the mechanism might be. For our beliefs concerning natural kinds are not in general independent of perceptual experience. If we were to learn that most of our perceptual experience was non-veridical, then little would be left of our knowledge of natural kinds. The brain-in-the-vat is at a severe epistemic disadvantage in coming to any form of scientific knowledge; and if there really were an analogy between our understanding of scientific and of ethical terms, then one would expect him to be at an equal disadvantage in the effort to acquire moral wisdom. It is for this reason that the continuity in moral and scientific inquiry so much stressed by writers such as Boyd and Railton appears entirely misplaced. A much better analogy is with our understanding of mathematical terms, for which the idea of a hookup with the real world is far less plausible.