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Ideal Conceivers, the Nature of Modality and the Response-Dependent Account of Modal Concepts

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Abstract

What grounds the truth of modal statements? And how do we get to know about what is possible or necessary? One of the most prominent anti-realist perspectives on the nature of modality, due to Peter Menzies, is the response-dependent account of modal concepts. Typically, offering a response-dependent account of a concept means defining it in terms of dispositions to elicit certain mental states from suitable agents under suitable circumstances. Menzies grounded possibility and necessity in the conceivability-response of ideal conceivers: P is possible iff an ideal conceiver could conceive that P. I will draw attention to three major objections that can be identified in the modal metaphysics and epistemology literature: Chalmers’ Incoherency Objection, Sherratt’s Transparency Objection and Geirsson’s Irrelevancy Objection. Each of these objections raises a different worry regarding Menzies’ account: that the notion of an ideal conceiver is incoherent, that the account implies a controversial thesis, and that it fails to offer an explanation of our knowledge of modality. The aim of this paper is to defend the response-dependent account of modality against these three objections.

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Notes

  1. See (Divers, 2021) for a longer discussion.

  2. For discussions of other kinds of anti-realism see (Divers, 2021; Morato, 2014, pp. 99–102; Sheratt, 2010, pp. 153–154).

  3. The belief that actuality implies possibility corresponds to axiom T (“If P, then possibly P”, or “If necessarily P, then P”), an axiom shared by most systems of modal logic. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing this.

  4. A thorough discussion of his account of conceivability follows in the fourth section of this paper.

  5. More on Menzies’ concept of ideal conceivers in the next section.

  6. I thankfully owe this objection to an anonymous reviewer.

  7. Of course, it might be objected that Menzies has set a rather low standard for his notion of ideality, but the purpose of this paper is merely to argue that his account does not succumb under Chalmers’ objection.

  8. For P a very complex proof, as in the hypothetical case presented by Geirsson.

  9. Recall that we are ideal conceivers when evaluating what Van Inwagen (1998) calls “simple, obvious modal statements” (p. 73). For sure, we do know that our tables could have been differently placed, or that we could have bought our computers from different stores etc., and, of course, such basic modal statements are obviously true.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS - UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-PD-2019-0004, within PNCDI III. For their feedback on previous versions of this paper, I thank Marian Calborean, Andrei Marasoiu, Mihai Rusu, Corina Stavila, Constantin Vica, Dan Zeman and an anonymous reviewer.

Funding

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS - UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-PD-2019-0004, within PNCDI III.

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    Alexandru Dragomir

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Dragomir, A. Ideal Conceivers, the Nature of Modality and the Response-Dependent Account of Modal Concepts. Philosophia 51, 659–674 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00584-y

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