Single Idea 9598

[catalogued under 10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 1. A Priori Necessary]

Full Idea

The epistemology of metaphysical modality requires no dedicated faculty of intuition. It is simply a special case of the epistemology of counterfactual thinking, a kind of thinking tightly integrated with our thinking about the spatio-temporal world.

Gist of Idea

Modal thinking isn't a special intuition; it is part of ordinary counterfactual thinking

Source

Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 5.6)

Book Reference

Williamson,Timothy: 'The Philosophy of Philosophy' [Blackwell 2007], p.178


A Reaction

This seems to me to be spot-on, though it puts the focus increasingly on the faculty of imagination, as arguably an even more extraordinary feature of brains than the much-vaunted normal consciousness.