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155Making Modal Distinctions: Kant on the Possible, the Actual, and the Intuitive UnderstandingKantian Review 19 (3): 339-365. 2014.One striking contrast that Kant draws between the kind of cognitive capacities that humans have and alternative kinds of intellect concerns modal concepts. Whilst , the very distinction between possibility and actuality would not arise for an intuitive understanding. The aim of this paper is to explore in more detail how the functioning of these cognitive capacities relates to modal concepts, and to provide a model of the intuitive understanding, in order to draw some general lessons for our abi…Read more
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107The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, edited by Helen Beebee and Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (review)Mind 122 (485): 253-257. 2013.Book review of "The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds", edited by Helen Beebee and Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (Routledge, 2010).
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129‘Creationism’ and the contingent A PrioriRatio 23 (2): 168-183. 2010.Williamson (1986) presents a troublesome example of the contingent a priori ; troublesome, because it does not involve indexicals, and hence cannot be defused via the usual two-dimensional strategies. Here I explore how the example works, via an examination of crucial belief-forming method M, partly in response to Hawthorne (2002) and the questions there raised for 'hyperreliable' belief-forming methods. I suggest that, when used to form a belief, M does its special work through creating a verif…Read more
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231Modal RationalismDialectica 65 (1): 103-115. 2011.Hossack (2007) defends what he calls the rationalist thesis: the thesis that necessity reduces to (or at least always coincides with) a priori knowledge. In this paper I discuss some features of Hossack’s rationalist account of necessity. In the first half, I attempt to fill in a missing link in the rationalist thesis, connecting the notions of primitiveness of facts and a priori modes of presentation. In the second half, I complain that the strategy of dissolving counterexamples is not enough, …Read more
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Kant: Modality |