•  143
    The aim of this chapter is to explore to some extent the relationship between identity and necessity in logic and metaphysics. First, I provide a historically-based summary of proofs of the necessity of identity, highlighting the importance of the role that self-identity plays. Second, I introduce two examples of metaphysical topics where the necessity of identity has played a pivotal role: the necessary a posteriori, and the coincidence of material objects. I argue that important aspects of the…Read more
  •  9
    This book sets out a Kant-inspired theory of modality, driven by a methodology which takes seriously questions about the function of modal judgment as a guide to a metaphysics of modality. It argues that we need logical modal concepts as a condition on our ability to think, and metaphysical modal concepts as a condition on our ability to think objectively. Concordant with this, it argues that logical necessity has its source in the laws of thought and that metaphysical necessity is relative to c…Read more
  •  62
    Genevan Ruminations on The Metaphysics of Knowledge
    with Fabrice Correia and Mollie Molyneaux
    Dialectica 65 (1): 117-123. 2011.
    A collection of questions collated from a book symposium on Keith Hossack's "The Metaphysics of Knowledge" (OUP, 2007).
  •  73
    Ruth Barcan Marcus and Minimal Essentialism
    Ratio 36 (4): 289-305. 2023.
    Since the publication of Kit Fine's “Essence and Modality”, there has been lively debate over how best to think of essence in relation to necessity. The present aim is to draw attention to a definition of essence in terms of modality that has not been given sufficient attention. This neglect is perhaps unsurprising, since it is not a proposal made in response to Fine's 1994 paper and ensuing discussion, but harks back to Ruth Barcan Marcus's earlier work in the 1960s and 1970s on essentialist cl…Read more
  •  1
    Essence and Mere Necessity
    In Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press. 2018.
    Recently, a debate has developed between those who claim that essence can be explained in terms of de re modality (modalists), and those who claim that de re modality can be explained in terms of essence (essentialists). The aim of this paper is to suggest that we should reassess. It is assumed that either necessity is to be accounted for in terms of essence, or that essence is to be accounted for in terms of necessity. I will argue that we should assume neither. I discuss what role these key n…Read more
  •  1
    Essentialism and logical consequence
    In Ivette Fred Rivera & Jessica Leech (eds.), Being Necessary: Themes of Ontology and Modality from the Work of Bob Hale., Oxford University Press. 2018.
    According to an increasingly popular view, the source of logical necessity is to be found in the essences of logical entities. One might be tempted to extend the view further in using it to tackle fundamental questions surrounding logical consequence. This chapter enquires: how does a view according to which the facts about logical consequence are determined by the essences of logical entities look in detail? Are there any more or less obvious problems arising for such a view? The chapter uncove…Read more
  •  20
    Being Necessary: Themes of Ontology and Modality from the Work of Bob Hale (edited book)
    with Ivette Fred Rivera
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    What is the relationship between ontology and modality - between what there is, and what there could be, must be, or might have been? Bob Hale interwove these two strands of metaphysics throughout his long and distinguished career, putting forward his theses in his book, Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them (OUP 2013). Hale addressed questions of ontology and modality on a number of fronts: through the development of a Fregean approach to ontology, an …Read more
  •  60
    Essence and Existence: Selected Essays by Bob Hale (edited book)
    with Bob Hale
    Oxford University Press. 2020.
    This book is a collection of essays written by Bob Hale (three co-authored), with a critical introduction from Kit Fine. They comprise Hale’s final years of work, adding to and extending beyond his landmark monograph Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them (OUP, 2013, 2nd edition 2015). The essays develop and consolidate several key themes in Hale’s work, most notably the notion of definition, especially as it extends beyond definition of a word to defini…Read more
  •  26
    Being Necessary: Themes of Ontology and Modality from the Work of Bob Hale. (edited book)
    with Ivette Fred Rivera
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    Edited by Ivette Fred-Rivera and Jessica Leech. What is the relationship between ontology and modality: between what there is, and what there could be, must be, or might have been? Throughout a distinguished career, Bob Hale’s work has addressed this question on a number of fronts, through the development of a Fregean approach to ontology, an essentialist theory of modality, and in his work on neo-logicism in the philosophy of mathematics. This collection of new essays engages with these themes…Read more
  •  54
    Kant on the Necessity of Necessity
    History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis (1): 1-29. 2021.
    One of Kant’s categories—a priori concepts the possession and applicability of which are necessary conditions of possible experience—is a concept of necessity. But it is unclear why the concept of necessity, as Kant defines it, should be a category thus understood. My aim is to offer a reading of Kant that fills this lacuna: the category of necessity is required to make necessity as it features in the world of experience understandable: a concept that the understanding can grasp and employ in co…Read more
  •  32
    Carl Stumpf, “Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie”
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (6): 1181-1216. 2020.
    by Carl Stumpf. [467] ii When Zeller, iii in the lecture “On the meaning and mission of epistemology”, iv called for a renewed fostering of this science, he designated as its mission the study of t...
  •  312
    From Essence to Necessity via Identity
    Mind 130 (519): 887-908. 2021.
    An essentialist theory of modality claims that the source of possibility and necessity lies in essence, where essence is then not to be defined in terms of necessity. Hence such theories owe us an account of why it is that the essences of things give rise to necessities in the way required. A new approach to understanding essence in terms of the notion of generalized identity promises to answer this challenge by appeal to the necessity of identity. I explore the prospects for this approach, and …Read more
  •  33
    Carl Stumpf, “Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie”
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (6): 1181-1216. 2020.
    It is well known that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Brentano school interacted fruitfully with early analytic philosophy: the Russell-Meinong debate is a paradigm example of this interaction. But Brentanians also engaged with other schools of philosophy. In his article “Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie” (1892) Stumpf took on two opponents: Kant and the leading neo-Kantians – in his terminology ‘criticists’ – as well as the so-called ‘psychologists’. The former want to…Read more
  •  74
    Martha Kneale on Why Metaphysical Necessities Are Not A Priori
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (4): 389-409. 2019.
    In her 1938 paper ‘Logical and Metaphysical Necessity’, Martha Kneale introduces the necessary a posteriori. I present a critical summary of Kneale's argument that so-called ‘metaphysical propositions’ are necessary but not a priori. I argue that Kneale is well placed to offer a template for reconciling conceivability approaches to modal epistemology with the post-Kripkean trend for taking metaphysical necessities to have their source in mind-independent reality.
  •  79
    In the Postulates of Empirical Thinking, a section of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant presents an account of the content and role of our concept of real possibility in terms of formal conditions of experience. However, much later in the Critique he introduces the idea of a material condition of possibility. What is this material condition of possibility, and how does it fit with the conception of possibility in terms of formal conditions? This essay argues that the key to answering these quest…Read more
  •  36
    What, if any, is the relation between modal judgment and our capacity to make judgments at all? On a plausible interpretation, Kant connects what he calls the modality of a judgment to its location in a course of reasoning: actual inferential relations between that act of judgment and others. There is a puzzling consequence of this interpretation. It is natural to understand Kant as claiming that every judgment has some modality. However, if the modality of a judgment is its location in a course…Read more
  •  155
    The Normativity of Kant's Logical Laws
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 34 (4). 2017.
    According to received wisdom, Kant takes the laws of logic to be normative laws of thought. This has been challenged by Tolley (2006). In this paper, I defend the received wisdom, but with an important modification: Kant's logical laws are constitutive norms for thought. The laws of logic do tell us what thinking is, not because all thoughts are in conformity with logical laws, but because all thoughts are, by nature, subject to the standard of logic.
  •  171
    Essence and Mere Necessity
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 82 309-332. 2018.
    Recently, a debate has developed between those who claim that essence can be explained in terms of de re modality (modalists), and those who claim that de re modality can be explained in terms of essence (essentialists). The aim of this paper is to suggest that we should reassess. It is assumed that either necessity is to be accounted for in terms of essence, or that essence is to be accounted for in terms of necessity. I will argue that we should assume neither. I discuss what role these key no…Read more
  •  70
    The function of modal judgment and the Kantian gap
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 13): 3193-3212. 2018.
    What is the function of modal judgment? Why do we make judgments of possibility and necessity? Or are such judgments, in fact, dispensable? This paper introduces and develops an answer to these questions based on Kant’s remarks in section 76 of the Critique of Judgment. Here, Kant appears to argue the following: that a capacity to make modal judgments using modal concepts is required for a capacity for objective representation, in light of our split cognitive architecture. This split cognitive a…Read more
  •  69
    The Mereology of Representation
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 116 (2): 205-228. 2016.
    Mental representations—like many other things—seem to have parts. However, it isn’t clear how to properly understand the idea of a part of a representation. In this paper I shed new light on how representations can have a mereology. In particular, it has been recognized that there is a mereological element to Kant’s distinction between two kinds of representations: intuitions and concepts. A concept depends upon its parts, whereas an intuition is prior to its parts. The paper thus focuses on an …Read more
  •  146
    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
  •  97
    Book review of "The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds", edited by Helen Beebee and Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (Routledge, 2010).
  •  123
    ‘Creationism’ and the contingent A Priori
    Ratio 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
  •  214
    Modal Rationalism
    Dialectica 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
  •  194
    The Varieties of (Relative) Modality
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 97 (2). 2015.
    In ‘The Varieties of Necessity’ Fine presents purported counterexamples to the view that a proposition is a naturally necessary truth if and only if it is logically necessary relative to or conditional upon the basic truths about the status and distribution of natural kinds, properties and relations. The aim of this article is to defend the view that natural necessity is relative necessity, and the general idea that we can define other kinds of necessity as relative, against Fine's criticisms.
  •  207
    Kant's Modalities of Judgment
    European Journal of Philosophy 20 (2): 260-284. 2012.
    Abstract: This paper proposes a way to understand Kant's modalities of judgment—problematic, assertoric, and apodeictic—in terms of the location of a judgment in an inference. Other interpretations have tended to understand these modalities of judgment in terms of one or other conventional notion of modality. For example, Mattey (1986) argues that we should take them to be connected to notions of epistemic or doxastic modality. I shall argue that this is wrong, and that these kinds of interpreta…Read more
  •  53
    Properties
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 28 (4): 439-442. 2014.
    A book review of "Properties" by Douglas Edwards (Polity Press, 2014).
  •  132
    Relative Necessity Reformulated
    with Bob Hale
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 46 (1): 1-26. 2017.
    This paper discusses some serious difficulties for what we shall call the standard account of various kinds of relative necessity, according to which any given kind of relative necessity may be defined by a strict conditional - necessarily, if C then p - where C is a suitable constant proposition, such as a conjunction of physical laws. We argue, with the help of Humberstone, that the standard account has several unpalatable consequences. We argue that Humberstone’s alternative account has certa…Read more