JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
Metaphysical Essays - Reductionism, Laws of Nature, and Modal Semantics

Author
Mathew, Vivek Chandy
Abstract
An open question in metaphysics is the nature of modal space, the space of possibility that undergirds (at least in the traditional order of analysis) our judgments about counterfactuals, laws of nature, essences, natures, and other modal phenomena. But modal space and modal phenomena have always seemed both metaphysically and epistemologically problematic, motivating the search for a reductive analysis for them. These essays explore a generally modal reductionist position, one that takes all fundamental properties of the world to be categorical and nonmodal. The particular challenges I consider are that of reducing laws of nature in the face of threats of nomic reductionism’s collapse into inductive skepticism, and that of providing an expressivist-inspired semantics for modal discourse that avoids Frege-Geach problems and yet offers a fully reductive analysis of alethic or objective metaphysical modalities.
Description
162 pages
Date Issued
2019-12Subject
Metaphysics; Modality; Ontology; Semantics
Committee Chair
Bennett, Karen
Committee Member
Sider, Theodore; Starr, William B.; Kushnir, Tamar
Degree Discipline
Philosophy
Degree Name
Ph. D., Philosophy
Degree Level
Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International
Rights URI
Type
dissertation or thesis
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution 4.0 International