Scott Sturgeon

Robert Stalnaker has recently argued that a pair of natural thoughts are incompatible. One of them is the view that items of non-indexical factual knowledge rule out possibilities. The other is the view that knowing what sensuous experience is like involves non-indexical knowledge of its phenomenal character. I argue against Stalnaker’s take on things, elucidating along the way how our knowledge of what experience is like fits together with the natural idea that items of non-indexical factual knowledge rule out possibilities

This chapter argues that a priori reflection is at best a fallible guide to modality (both possibility and necessity). It also claims that the usefulness of a priori reflection, as a guide to possibility and necessity, turns on the ‘bounty’ of modality itself. If possibility turns out to be plentiful — in a sense glossed in the chapter — it is argued that a priori reflection will be a good-but-fallible guide to it. If necessity turns out to be meagre — in a dual sense of that gloss — it is argued that a priori reflection will not be a mark of possibility. In the end it is argued that our take on modal bounty itself should turn on how best to systematize thought.