Samuel Boardman

This paper argues that we use emotions to acquire our intuitive modal knowledge. In particular, it explores the role of surprise in knowledge of epistemic and circumstantial modal statements. It begins with a discussion of standard modal semantics which elucidates the sorts of epistemic problems that creatures like us face in their attempt to know modal statements. It then distinguishes various sorts of surprise and elucidates their fittingness conditions. After that, it formulates some surprise tests and exemplifies their scope and limits in modal knowledge acquisition. To initiate a surprise test, one supposes or imagines some proposition. Roughly, if that proposition gives rise to a surprise response, one judges it impossible; otherwise, one judges it possible.

This paper argues that imagination constrained by core cognition yields modal knowledge of the sort of quotidian possibilities at issue in everyday life. But are core constraints of the right strength to generate the relevant possibilities? We turn to naturalistic resources to answer that question. Recent psychological results show that children and adults judge violations of core cognitive constraints impossible. Modal semantics suggests that violations of these constraints aren’t possible in the quotidian senses of ‘possible’ at issue in everyday life. Together, these psychological and semantic considerations suggest that core constraints are of the right strength to generate the relevant possibilities. Some philosophers might seek to impose the additional requirement that core constraints block every impossible situation. However, we think that matters are more complex. First, core constraints are a proper subset of the constraints to imagination. Peripheral constraints block lots of the impossible situations. Second, imaginative constraints (core or peripheral) aren’t sufficient to block every impossible situation. Rather, contextual beliefs block lots of the relevant quotidian impossibilities. We conclude that our discussion is of wider methodological interest as it implements a naturalistic methodological approach that appeals to core cognition, modal psychology, and modal semantics to investigate modal knowledge acquisition.

Is acceptance an act or a state? Jonathan Cohen is often seen as a proponent of the view that acceptance is a mental act. In contrast, Michael Bratman claims that acceptance is a mental state. This paper argues that the evidence supports a more subtle approach. Linguistic intuitions about the lexical aspect of the verb ‘accept’ support the view that there is an act of acceptance and a state of acceptance. It is shown that ‘accept’ is polysemous between a non‐stative and a stative sense. In addition to its evident stative sense, ‘accept’ has a non‐stative “agentive achievement” sense which denotes the essentially intentional action of adopting the state of acceptance. Ultimately, the paper returns to Jonathan Cohen's view of acceptance and argues that it is more charitable to attribute to him the view that to accept is to adopt the state of acceptance.

Metaphysics-first approaches dominate the current literature in the epistemology of modality. According to metaphysics-firsters, metaphysical theses have an important role in the justification of modal epistemologies. For example, the thesis that essentialist truths constitute the metaphysical grounds of modal truths is meant to have an important role in the justification of essentialist modal epistemologies. In this article, we argue against this approach. We first pick up some of the groundwork on behalf of the metaphysics-firsters and explicitly spell out potential arguments for their view. However, despite some initial plausibility, these arguments are ultimately found wanting. We conclude that the metaphysics-first approach lacks motivation and puts far too stringent demands upon modal epistemologists.