Florent Dumont MPhil

September 1, 2023 until February 29, 2024

Affiliation: University of Oxford

Research for a study about:

Metaphysical Modality and Paradox

Modal talk is highly context-sensitive. Without information concerning the context of utterance, it is impossible to know which modality is being expressed by a sentence like “you cannot swim across the English Channel”. On a deontic use of the modal expression “cannot”, the sentence conveys that you are forbidden to swim across the English Channel. On a dynamic use, it conveys that you are not able to do so. On a yet different reading, it may convey that it is incompatible with the laws of physics that you do so, and so on. Philosophers often work under the assumption that there is a strongest objective notion of modality, sometimes called “metaphysical modality” (Williamson, 2016). Metaphysical modality is supposed to concern all possible worlds, as opposed to, say, only the physically possible worlds. The notion is central to a wide range of issues in contemporary metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. The aim of this project is to reconsider this assumption in the face of a certain paradox of modal recombination.

Lecture

One More Angel in Heaven: Modal Plenitude and Paradox

Philosophy of Science Colloquium

Date: 2023 December, 14,

Time: 3-4.30 pm CET

Venue: Lecture Hall 2H, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2nd floor, 1010 Vienna

Abstract:

It is natural to assume that what is metaphysically possible is closed under certain principles of plenitude. These are principles to the effect that if such and such is metaphysically possible, then such and so ought to be metaphysically possible as well. For instance, assuming that it is possible in the relevant sense for there to be an angel, then it should be possible for there to be this angel as well as another one distinct from it. Principles of plenitude delimit the scope of metaphysical possibility, so to speak. A modal paradox due to Fritz (2017) shows that plausible principles of plenitude for metaphysical possibility are mutually inconsistent. I present one solution to the paradox according to which metaphysical modality exhibits a kind of indefinite extensibility (Roberts, 2019; Rayo, 2020). Roughly, this is the view that for any objective notion of possibility, a more inclusive notion can be defined. This means that there are many possible interpretations of the metaphysical "could", each taking a different opinion on whether something could have been the case. I outline my preferred way of spelling out this conception of metaphysical modality and explore its consequences for modal metaphysics.