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Single Idea 15167

[filed under theme 10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / a. Conceivable as possible ]

Full Idea

In the traditional empiricist picture, we go about modal enquiry by trying to see whether we can imagine a situation in which it would be correct to assert the negation of a proposed necessary truth. Thus we can find out the limits of our concepts.

Gist of Idea

Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths

Source

Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.1)

Book Ref

Sidelle,Alan: 'Necessity, Essence and Individuation' [Cornell 1989], p.12

The 22 ideas from Alan Sidelle

15032 Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider]
15167 Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle]
15169 Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle]
15164 We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle]
15165 A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle]
15168 That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle]
15166 Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle]
15172 Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle]
15173 That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle]
15171 The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle]
15175 Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle]
15176 The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle]
15174 A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle]
15177 Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle]
15179 To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle]
15181 Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle]
15180 There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle]
15178 Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle]
15182 Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle]
15184 Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle]
15185 We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle]
15183 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle]