Methodological Advantages

This chapter makes the case that modal normativism also brings significant methodological advantages. First, it can provide a much-needed justification of using intuitions, thought experiments, and a form of conceptual analysis, in answering metaphysical modal questions. Second, it provides a straightforward methodology for answering such questions—considered as “internal” questions—and gives reasons for thinking that some such questions are simply unanswerable. But such questions may also be addressed as external questions, where we are concerned not with what rules our terms do follow, but what rules they should follow, and what linguistic and conceptual schemes we should use. This gives us the means for understanding some debates about metaphysical modality as engaged in metalinguistic negotiation and conceptual engineering—and thereby preserving the idea that such debates may be deep and important.

Other Objections to Modal Normativism

This chapter responds to other objections to modal normativism, including alleged counterexamples in which we have an apparent rule without a necessity (for example, in “I am here now”), or in which we appear to have a necessity without a rule (for example, in claims that numbers exist necessarily). It then turns to respond to allegations that the view is implicitly circular, since semantic rules must themselves be understood in modal terms, or since we must also take into account the consequences of the rules and so invoke a notion of logical necessity. In responding to these objections, the chapter also points to non-descriptivist approaches that have been developed for nomological necessity and logical necessity.

The Rise and Fall of Early Non-Descriptive Approaches

This chapter recounts the early history of non-descriptive approaches to modality and why they fell out of favor. It begins by tracing the challenges of understanding modality back to British empiricists such as Hume and Mill. It then moves to discussing the form of modal conventionalism developed by Moritz Schlick and promoted by A. J. Ayer, and examines common criticisms raised against conventionalism—finding that they misconstrue the view. The chapter also recounts Wittgenstein’s development of a view along these lines, along with later developments of non-descriptive views by Ramsey, Ryle, and Sellars. Such views encountered familiar problems such as the Frege-Geach or “embedding” problem, and later barriers arose with the work of Quine and Kripke. The challenge is thus laid out for a contemporary non-descriptivist view to show how it can overcome these historical barriers.

Introduction

This chapter argues that recent work on modality has been implicitly guided by the descriptivist assumption—that is, the assumption that modal claims aim to describe modal features of this world, or features of other possible worlds. But this assumption leads to ontological “placement” problems of saying what such things are and how they fit into a physicalistic ontology, to epistemological problems of saying how we could come to know these modal facts, and to methodological problems about how we can answer questions about what is metaphysically possible or necessary. This chapter suggests that we may do better by taking a cue from the deflationary and expressivist traditions and adopting a non-descriptive approach. On this view, modal claims are seen not as descriptive, but rather as functioning to convey, enforce, or renegotiate rules or norms in advantageous ways. It closes by overviewing the plan of the chapters to come.

Epistemological Advantages

This chapter argues that accepting modal normativism brings significant epistemological advantages. Those who aim to account for modal knowledge face the integration challenge of reconciling an account of what is involved in knowing modal truths with a plausible story about how we can come to know them, and the reliability challenge of explaining how we could have evolved to have a reliable faculty for coming to know modal truths. Recent empiricist accounts of modal knowledge cannot solve these problems regarding specifically metaphysical modal truths—leaving us with the threat of skepticism about large portions of metaphysics. However, by giving a different functional story, the modal normativist can develop a plausible response to the remaining versions of both of these classic problems for modal epistemology. Modal normativists can also respond to further worries parallel to those raised by Sharon Street’s evolutionary debunking arguments in meta-ethics.

Ontological Advantages

This chapter aims to make clear the ontological consequences of adopting a modal normativist position. By combining normativism with the easy approach to ontology, we can see that modal normativism gives us a form of simple realism, according to which there are modal facts, properties, and even possible worlds, in the only sense that has sense. Such entities are not, however, “posited” as truthmakers that are supposed to “explain” what “makes our modal claims true.” But although the normativist accepts that there are modal facts and properties, the view also brings ontological advantages, avoiding ontological problems that plague traditional realist views, including placement problems and the grounding problem. The normativist view is also compared here to the forms of “classificatory conventionalism” advocated by Ross Cameron and Theodore Sider.

Handling De Re and A Posteriori Modal Claims

This chapter aims to show how the modal normativist approach may accommodate the Kripkean idea that there are certain de re necessities (apparently attributing modal properties to individuals) and necessary truths that can only be known a posteriori. It begins by arguing, contrary to Putnam and others who defend purely causal theories of reference, that we do have reason to think that names and natural kind terms are governed by certain semantic rules, even if these rules are conditionalized and revisable. It goes on to show how the rules we need to accept in any case enable us to see even de re and a posteriori necessities as object-language reflections of semantic rules and their consequences. Modal normativists can thus account for de re and a posteriori necessities as long as they allow that the semantic rules may be conditionalized, schematic, and world-deferential.

The Function of Modal Discourse

This chapter begins to develop a neo-pragmatist view of modal discourse that (contrary to most work in the recent metaphysical tradition) denies that talk of what is possible or necessary serves a descriptive function. Instead, the chapter argues that the modal terminology serves a normative function. More particularly, having modal terms in our language enables us to convey norms and rules in useful ways, for it enables us to make explicit that an expression has a regulative status, to express conditionals that make explicit our ways of reasoning with rules, and to express permissions as well as requirements. Metaphysical modal discourse in particular (it is argued) serves to convey semantic rules and their consequences in the useful form of object-language indicatives. The chapter also discusses how one should understand semantic rules, and in what ways they are analogous and disanalogous to rules of games.

Conclusion

The conclusion ties the work done here to the broader goals of demystifying and reorienting metaphysics. It aims to demystify metaphysics by showing that metaphysical questions that are well-formed and answerable can be answered in ways that require nothing more mysterious than conceptual and empirical work. It also aims to reorient metaphysics toward work on how our conceptual scheme does work, and on what linguistic or conceptual scheme we ought to use. The conclusion also aims to draw out the three threads that have been interwoven throughout this book: the neo-pragmatist functional pluralist idea that modal talk is non-descriptive, the deflationary meta-ontological “easy ontology” view, and the view that the rules of use for our terms are often open-textured and revisable. While these three views are separable in principle, together they form a stronger package, and exemplify an approach that may also prove useful in addressing other philosophical problems.

The Meaning of Modal Discourse

The goal of this chapter is to make it clear how the modal normativist account can avoid the notorious “Frege-Geach” or “embedding” problem that has long threatened non-descriptive views of all kinds. While Chapter 2 identifies an alternative function for modal discourse, we cannot take this to be a matter of identifying the meaning of modal terms. For modal claims may be embedded in conditionals, negations, etc., in which case they are not serving their characteristic function, and yet must be thought to have the same meaning. To meet this problem, this chapter gives the meaning of modal terms in terms of their inferential role—which is constant even in embedded contexts—and shows how this meaning is related to the function of modal terms. The chapter also aims to show how the modal normativist account can avoid the classic objections to modal conventionalism.