Abstract
Since our capacities and methods of cognizing reality merely seem to tell us how things are but only within close limits how they could or must be, our claims to knowledge of mere possibilities and necessities raise the suspicion of exceptionalism: the capacities and methods used in developing these claims seem special compared to those involved in cognizing reality. One may be sceptical especially with regard to them, and there are doubts that they can be naturalistically explained. To avoid exceptionalism, Timothy Williamson has proposed to reduce the epistemology of modality to the epistemology of everyday counterfactuals. There are doubts that the proposal succeeds. One objection is that the counterfactual-based epistemology fails to account for metaphysical necessities like the necessity of origin. For the account to cover such necessities, constitutive facts like the origin of a living being would have to form implicit constraints built into the capacity for everyday counterfactual reasoning. But is counterfactual reasoning indeed so constrained? I answer this question in the affirmative, presenting an epistemology of counterfactuals for modal epistemology to build on. The constraints gradually emerge by a broadly abductive process, starting from within everyday counterfactual reasoning. The process does not presuppose any independent knowledge of the constitutive status of certain facts.
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Notes
Van Inwagen is only sceptical about far-fetched modal claims. Strohminger and Yli-Vakkuri (2018) discuss whether his reasons for doubt can be transferred to Williamson’s account. In particular, it seems doubtful that we can develop consequences of far-fetched antecedent (the if…-part) scenarios in sufficient detail. Williamson maintains that we are in a position to assess when a scenario has been sufficiently developed to support a confident verdict (Williamson 2007, 155). The account to come supports that the capacity of such an assessment arises together with the processes that calibrate counterfactual reasoning.
‘To be sure, the most efficient mechanism to lead our ancestors to truth might also correctly encompass other possibilities, but it is highly implausible to think that it would encompass all possibilities, no matter how different from actuality’ (Nozick 2001, 122).
Yli-Vakkuri (p.c.) had in mind a safety-based theory rather than reliabilism. The question becomes whether counterfactual reasoning could have easily gone wrong.
As Vaidya and Wallner (2018) put it: ‘Holding fixed the right set [of truths] cannot be magic’.
Cf. Biggs on ‘tacit abduction’ (Biggs 2011, 318).
I assume that, for John to be born before 2017, a fertilized egg cell had to develop over several months. We could reformulate ¬VACCINE by the time of conception to avoid this assumption.
Such a raising of standards is quite normal in counterfactual discourse (cf. Klecha 2015).
The identity of the fertilized egg presumably does not depend on the immunity gene, nor does John’s origin. For instance, if John had not had the immunity gene, he might have got infected. However, if there is no special reason to the contrary, we are disposed to move the fertilized egg as it is together with the time of John’s conception.
w1 typifies candidates for the closest world in which John’s life starts from the same fertilized egg in 2016. The description may be fine-tuned to rule out some of these candidates.
Kripke (1980, 44) says that counterfactual situations are simply stipulated. Indeed the explicit antecedent is stipulated, but the substantial requirements for a situation to include the bearer of a proper name impose independent constraints on counterfactual reasoning.
As an example of more recherché counterfactuals bearing on the constitutive role of origins, imagine a mad scientist by a cunning device has replaced the fertilized egg E Aristotle came from (or only half of it, 25% of it…) at the very moment of his conception by an artificial duplicate with the same genetic make-up:
(REPLICA) If E had been replaced by a perfect replica, Aristotle would not have been born.
Dwelling on counterfactuals like REPLICA, mind-boggling as they are, is likely to make a distinctive contribution to our considerate verdict on the constitutive role of origins.
Or to put it in terms of minimum alteration: to treat the closest antecedent world as one where Aristotle’s origin is preserved whatever else is true at that world.
True: if Hobbes had squared the circle, then the mathematical community at the time would have been surprised.
False: if Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would have been thrilled.(cf. Bjerring 2014).
Perhaps they can be simply explained by the impossibility of the consequent of ACTUALARISTOTLE1 and the necessity of the consequent of ACTUALARISTOTLE2.
A further caveat is illustrated by SOCRATES (cf. Fine 1994, 4):
(SOCRATES1) If Socrates had not been an element of singleton Socrates, he would have been a different individual from the one who actually taught Plato.
(SOCRATES2) If Socrates had not been an element of singleton Socrates, he would have been the same individual as the one who actually taught Plato.
Assume we accept ACTUALARISTOTLE1 and reject ACTUALARISTOTLE2 but reject SOCRATES1 and accept SOCRATES2 although Socrates necessarily is an element of singleton Socrates. Then counterpossibles are sensitive to metaphysical relationships which are more fine-grained than metaphysical necessity. We have to reason back from the former to the latter.
For a similar proposal cf. Brogaard and Salerno (2013, 647).
To Roca-Royes, Williamson subscribes to this claim in (Williamson 2007, 171). But Williamson only says that the principled capacity for developing counterfactual suppositions which entail a contradiction cannot be disentangled from the capacity for assessing counterfactuals in general. He does not talk about essentialist knowledge, and he would firmly deny that we need outright knowledge of essences for knowing counterfactuals. Kment’s (2014) view that knowledge of LIQUID and the like presupposes knowledge of the pertinent essences is a better target. I join Roca-Royes in arguing against this view.
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Dohrn, D. Counterfactuals and Non-exceptionalism About Modal Knowledge. Erkenn 85, 1461–1483 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0086-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0086-5