I’ve been meaning to get back to my brief criticism of two-dimensional modal semantics for a while. I’ve now produced this short draft of just over 3,000 words. Previously I tried to do too much in the same paper, talking about conceivability and modal epistemology as well, but this is now a much more concise analysis of why I think that substantial a posteriori necessities, such as ‘Water=H2O’ (although I think that this is in fact a problematic example), are a problem for the 2D framework defended especially by David Chalmers and Frank Jackson. In short, the problem is that trivial a priori truths and substantial a posteriori necessities cannot be distinguished in the two-dimensional framework. The paper is so short that I don’t think I will outline it here, but I would of course appreciate any comments on the draft!

Just a brief note indicating that I’ve uploaded a revised version of my paper on counterfactuals and modal epistemology. I first blogged about this almost a year ago, and I refer you to the previous post for an outline of the paper.

I’ve now got a draft of my paper for the Meaning, Modality and Apriority symposium with Scott Soames. You can get it from here. The abstract of the talk is here. The paper does pretty much what I promise in the abstract: I first summarise Soames’ account of the necessary a posteriori, then I look into Alan Sidelle’s deflationary account of it, and attempt to demonstrate that these two accounts are remarkably close to each other. Hence, Soames is at a risk of sliding towards the view according to which modality is linguistic and the a priori reduces to analyticity — which is a view that he strongly opposes.

I then go on to give an analysis of what I believe is missing both from Soames’ and Sidelle’s account: an examination of the a priori, essentialist principles which are responsible for the modal content of the necessary a posteriori. Since the main example being discussed is that of water, I look into some recent work in the philosophy of chemistry, especially by Robin Hendry. I argue that we will need a detailed analysis of the nature of chemical substances, and specifically whether chemical substances have their molecular structures essentially to determine whether ‘Water is H20′ is an example of the necessary a posteriori. Hendry’s analysis of the case is a good example of how I think the essentialist account should proceed.

The upshot is that Soames is at a crossroads: either he should concede to the deflationist and adopt the view that modality is linguistic and the a priori can be identified with the analytic, or he should engage in the type of work that we saw in Hendry’s suggestion: a detailed analysis of the underlying essentialist principles. Given that Soames is one of the loudest critics of the deflationary approach, I would hope that he is more tempted by the latter option.

The paper is still in draft stage, so comments are especially welcome. I will present the paper in Cologne on May 19th.

Recently I’ve been working on a paper about the fundamental level of reality, and I’ve just about got a draft of the paper ready now. It’s still quite rough and sketchy, but since I need some time away from it before it’s beneficial to have a fresh look, I might as well post about it here. The full paper is available here. A word of warning: although I discuss philosophical themes such as the ‘levels’ metaphor and how it is related to ontological dependence, there is also quite a lot of physics in the paper. I developed some examples from physics that I’ve used before, especially regarding the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and there is also some discussion about fundamental physical constants, especially the fine structure constant. I also use the GRW theory of quantum mechanics as well as loop quantum gravity in my examples. I quite enjoyed browsing physics journals when I did my research for this paper, but I have to admit that I have no deep understanding of the underlying mathematics and there may very well be serious confusions in my examples. Hence, I would especially welcome any input from those who do know their maths/physics.

I’m interested in three question in the paper:

1. Is there a fundamental level of reality?
2. If there is, how can we know that this is the case?
3. Can we know what this fundamental level is like?

I defend a positive answer in regard to the first question, but I am perhaps more interested in the second, methodological question, as well as the third question which is closely related to the second. The presentation of the paper follows the discussion familiar from Every Thing Must Go (2007) by Ladyman & Ross. Ladyman & Ross argue that reality is not organised into levels in the first place and that there is no fundamental level (pp. 4, 53–7, 178–80). I attempt to show that there are plausible interpretations of the ‘levels’ metaphor. The interpretation that I prefer is in terms of ontological dependence. I also present an argument for a fundamental level (outlined below) and a detailed analysis of each premise of the argument. The argument is a priori in nature, although potential support from current physics will be discussed in detail. If the argument is correct, it shows that a fundamental level is metaphysically necessary for the existence of macrophysical objects, but I will not offer support for such a strong result. Rather, in the process of defending the premises of the argument, it will be suggested that a fundamental level is physically necessary, that is, necessary given the physics of the actual world, albeit only if certain emerging theories in physics are correct. At the very least, I hope to establish that a fundamental level of reality is a viable metaphysical possibility. I also analyse our means to acquire information about the existence and nature of this level.

Here is a brief outline of my main argument:

1. There are macrophysical objects.
2. Certain things are physically necessary for the existence of macrophysical objects, e.g. the laws that govern molecular binding.
3. These laws require certain regularities on the microphysical level, e.g. that fundamental physical constants fall within a specific range.
4. The required regularity of the microphysical level would not be possible without a fundamental supervenience base.
5. Therefore, there is a fundamental level.

I will not go into the details of the premises here, you can see the actual paper for that. In any case, I hope that the first premise needs no further support, but I defend each of the remaining premises. It should be noted that the modality in premise 4 can be interpreted either as metaphysical or physical. I am optimistic about the metaphysical interpretation, but I will focus on the weaker, physical reading. So, we are primarily interested in the existence conditions of macrophysical objects given the actual laws of physics. I’ll conclude this post with a passage from a paper on braided ribbon networks related to loop quantum gravity, entitled ‘Locality and Translations in Braided Ribbon Networks‘, by Jonathan Hackett, as it supports my case quite nicely:

In the last century, there have been repeated discoveries of underlying structure. Moving from macroscopic objects, to atoms, to components of the nuclei, to quarks, it has been demonstrated repeatedly that the differences between supposedly fundamental particles are, in fact, merely consequences of the composite structure of underlying reality. It only seems a natural progression that such an approach of looking for underlying structure be used to explain the particles of the standard model. Attempts towards this end, dubbed preon models, met with many obstacles, but still there was something deeper that presented itself as a difficulty. The difficulty is that, as such a process does not have an end, we can continue to suppose that below the currently understood structure is another set of more fundamental particles. This idea quickly becomes unappealing at a philosophical level, or even a practical level, as the question then becomes ‘What could make it end?’. The idea that the preons would be as fundamental as possible [...] provides a way of achieving the desired end. One way to achieve this end is to suggest that the preons be composed of structure within spacetime. (Hackett 2008: 5757.)

As I reported in a previous post, I submitted an abstract to a workshop with Scott Soames in Cologne. My paper ‘The Metaphysical Status of Modal Statements’ (see my earlier post for the abstract), is one of the four papers that has been accepted for presentation at the workshop, and the programme is now online. The other presentations at the workshop will be by Robert Michels from Konstanz, Dr. Michael Nelson from UC Riverside, and the fourth speaker is still TBA. There is also a graduate conference preceding the workshop, which I will attend. I’ll post a draft of my paper for the conference once I get around to it. I’ve got most of the material already, but need to work on it quite a bit still.

I will be flying to Cologne on May 13th and staying until the 21st. The reason for such a long stay is that there is also a Workshop on the A Priori just before the Soames conference, and I thought I might as well go to that as well since I’m working on the a priori myself. There will be some good people there too: Carrie Jenkins, Daniel Cohnitz, and Jonathan Ichikawa, among others.

From Cologne I plan to take the train to Dresden, stay there for two nights, then head to Berlin for another two nights, and finally fly back to the UK on May 25th. The Dresden-Berlin trip is just to see some friends and to have a look around in Germany. Any suggestions as to what to do/see in Cologne, Dresden or Berlin are most welcome!