New Substantive Revision to the SEP Entry on the Epistemology of Modality

 Here.

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Van Inwagen's Nod to John Seddon

Much recent work in the epistemology of modality acknowledges the challenge of Peter van Inwagen's mitigated modal skepticism, especially as presented in his celebrated 1998  Phil. Studies paper, "Modal Epistemology". Furthermore, many have attempted to grapple with van Inwagen's arguments in that paper. Despite this, not many note van Inwagen's not-infrequent reference to John Seddon's 1972 Mind paper, "Logical Possibility" as an important source of his skepticism about modal claims remote from ordinary experience.  This is significant, since (i) a common criticism is that van Inwagen's mitigated modal skepticism isn't sufficiently warranted, since he fails to motivate a presumption against modal claims remote from ordinary experience, and (ii) van Inwagen alludes to the arguments in Seddon's paper as a core basis for such a presumption. The aim of this post is thus to exposit the main points of Seddon's paper. The hope is that it ...
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Tidman's "Conceivability as a Test for Possiblity": Classic Papers in Modal Epistemology Series

Notes on Paul Tidman's “Conceivability as a Test for Possibility”, American Philosophical Quarterly 31(4), October 1994: 297-309. Summary of the paper: Tidman’s paper consists of two main parts: the exposition and critique of conceivability theories of modal epistemology, and a brief exposition of an intuition-based account of modal epistemology.  In the first part, Tidman critiques four main construals of conceivability: conceivability as picturability, as understandability, as believability, and as entertainability. According to the picturability construal, P is conceivable iff one can form a mental image that represents P being the case, where ‘mental image’ is construed broadly enough so as to include the whole gamut of phenomenal imagery: visual images, sounds, tastes, textures, etc. Tidman argues that the picturability account is inadequate for several reasons.  First, many possible states of affairs aren’t picturable, yet we seem to have justified beliefs about the mod...
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Two Pictures of a World's Structure; Two Views on the Scope of Modal Knowledge

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