Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

I discuss Timothy Williamson’s approach to philosophical methodology in Overfitting and Heuristics in Philosophy, and its consequences for theories of belief, content, and what is said. I’ll argue that a medium-grained approach to these issues, situated in-between classical intensionalism and impossible worlds hyperintensionalism, is worth taking seriously.

A hypothetical syllogism with three conditional propositions (hereinafter HSc) is considered invalid according to the ordinary discourse counterexamples in the existing literature. In this paper, I argue that such counterexamples cannot verify the validity of HSc. The conditional propositions in these arguments are questionable, whether that is indicative or counterfactual HSc. The arguments are considered invalid not because HSc is invalid by itself, but because there is a mismatch between the antecedent of one premise and the consequent of another premise (i.e. a violation of the common part of both…

Timothy Williamson has defended two hypotheses concerning counterfactual conditionals: that necessity can be defined in counterfactual terms; and that we follow a heuristic to the effect that a counterfactual is assessed by assessing the consequent while counterfactually supposing the antecedent. The two hypotheses form the bedrock for a program aiming to reduce the epistemology of modality to the epistemology of counterfactual thinking. This paper argues that the pair of theses, if construed as Williamson intends it, has the unwanted consequence of trivializing our judgements about necessity and possibility, thus threatening…

McGee notably provided a putative counterexample to Modus Ponens. McGee’s puzzle is based on a scenario involving three candidates running for president in the 1980 United States elections. We will present a slightly modified version of McGee’s election scenario, in which the probability of one of the candidates (i.e., Ronald Reagan) winning is reduced to a conveniently low value. As we will see, two ways out of the puzzle, suggested by Fulda and Paoli respectively, do not survive this minor change in the scenario. In addition, we will point to…

Analytic metaphysics has been criticized for its dubious epistemological status. Today, anti-metaphysical sentiments often promote naturalized metaphysics as the only viable way to metaphysical theorizing. In this paper, I argue that analytic metaphysics (or at least a significant portion of it) has the same kind of legitimacy that naturalized metaphysics exhibits. I first point out that naturalized metaphysics is secured by the de facto legitimacy of natural science and its continuity with it. Then, I argue that analytic metaphysics can pursue a similar strategy by relying on the de facto…

I present a novel approach to modal imagination as a means of knowing metaphysical possibilities. Hume calls the link between imagining and possibility an ‘established maxim’. I ask: what makes it seem so natural to use imagination as a guide to modality? (1.) I draw some lessons on my motivational question from the current debate. (2.) I develop my answer: we use imagination to creatively simulate solutions to feasibility issues. (2.1.) To corroborate my answer, I consider everyday feasibility issues. (2.2.) I then extend the account to more remote feasibility…