Lars Enden

As every teacher of introductory logic can attest, it is a significant challenge to get students to accept the truth table for the material conditional. The main sticking point is that students can be reluctant to accept that a material conditional is true whenever its antecedent is false. In this paper, we examine some popular strategies for teaching the truth table for the material conditional. Ultimately, we find them all lacking because they all rely—in one way or another—on stipulating that the truth table is correct. We argue that stipulation is a less than ideal way to teach the truth table for the conditional, and we, therefore, recommend a new strategy that actually shows students why the material conditional is true when its antecedent is false.

The integration challenge for modality states that metaphysical theories of modality tend to fail in one of two ways: either they render the meanings of modal sentences mysterious, or they render modal knowledge mysterious. I argue that there are specific semantic and epistemic constraints on metaphysics implied by the integration challenge and that a plausible metaphysical theory of modality will satisfy both of them. I further argue that no popular metaphysical theory of modality simultaneously satisfies both of the constraints. Therefore, a new metaphysical theory of modality is needed, one that can offer a clear response to the integration challenge. I attempt to supply the needed theory and show that it satisfies the constraints of the integration challenge. The overall result is an argument for a new and unique metaphysical theory of modality that I call constructionism.