Conceivability & Possibility

Here I bewail the slapdash and confusing way in which philosophers bandy about the word ‘incoherent’ (and ‘incoherence’ and ‘incoherently’).  To some it appears to mean: inconsistent; to others: pragmatically self-defeating; and to yet others: nonsensical, i.e. meaningless.  And often one is left guessing.

In On the Plurality of Worlds David Lewis claims that the actual world is one of a huge plurality of concrete worlds, inhabited by equally concrete individuals, and that these worlds are causally and spatiotemporally isolated. Our world is the actual world, the other worlds are, from our perspective, possible worlds, and the belief that things might be otherwise than they are comes from an existential quantification over these concrete possible worlds. In Différence et repetition Gilles Deleuze claims that «the virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual». If we replace the word ‘virtual’ with ‘possible’, Deleuze’s claim seems to perfectly match that of Lewis: the ‘virtual/possible’ is real without being actual and it possesses a fundamental explanatory power. Furthermore, both philosophers claim that a plurality of worlds exists and that we must distinguish ‘accessibility’ from genuine ‘possibility’. However, right in the gap between virtual and possible – gap that tends too often to vanish – we can trace the difference between Lewis’s philosophy and that of Deleuze, between a metaphysics of possibility and a metaphysics of potentiality. In order to put in constructive conversation two philosophers that belong to traditions far removed from each other, we need to distinguish the reality of possible from the reality of virtual; this requires to sketch an outline of Deleuze’s theory of possibility and possible worlds, theory in which the doctrine of the possible is wholly governed by the doctrine of the virtual. While underlining similarities and differences, we suggest an alternative way to make sense of Lewis’s claim about the existence of a concrete plurality of worlds without relying on the problematic «principle of recombination», and we point out how a philosophy of virtuality could offer a useful contribution to the ongoing debate on dispositions. Besides similarities, the major interest for comparing the reality of the possible and the reality of virtual stems from the key role played by Lewis’s and Deleuze’s ideas in the Italian and international philosophical debate.

A long philosophical tradition in modern philosophy, stemming from Kant, holds that necessary features of the world are a by-product of our conceptual scheme (or schemes): we regard as necessary what we could not experience, or conceive, or linguistically describe as being otherwise.

I limiti di ciò che possiamo immaginare sono anche limiti del nostro mondo? Ciò che è rappresentabile definisce l’ambito di ciò che è possibile? E, se sì, in che senso?
Questi sono gli interrogativi di fondo che supportano e motivano la scrittura di questo libro.
Il percorso che conduce dalle domande alle tesi conclusive passa attraverso tre principali nuclei argomentativi.
Il primo nucleo concerne il rapporto tra immaginazione e percezione. Si tratta qui di capire in che misura la sfera dell’immaginario sia in grado di ricreare, ed anticipare, la sfera della realtà sensibile.
In seconda istanza viene esaminata la transizione tra immaginario di tipo sensibile e rappresentazione concettuale. Questo punto viene affrontato attraverso un’analisi della genesi e delle potenzialità della significazione linguistica.
Il terzo nucleo argomentativo riguarda il rapporto tra gli apriori della rappresentazione (ciò che è rappresentativamente necessario o rappresentativamente impossibile) e la sfera dei possibili (ontologici, epistemici e metafisici).
Queste analisi confluiscono nel determinare le condizioni per una rappresentazione dotata di senso, e nel chiarificare il senso dell’attività rappresentativa in quanto tale.
Su questa base si profilano le conclusioni del lavoro, che ridefiniscono il rapporto tra rappresentazione, realtà e verità. Tale ridefinizione porta a rivendicare un senso ed una funzione essenzialmente differenti per l’uso scientifico delle rappresentazioni rispetto all’uso filosofico delle medesime.

Les arguments de concevabilité sont des arguments philosophiques reposant sur le principe selon lequel tout ce qui est concevable est possible. Cette thèse se propose d’examiner et d’évaluer à un niveau général cette forme d’argumentation en s’appuyant sur des exemples historiques et contemporains. Nous examinons en particulier plusieurs candidats possibles pour préciser la notion de concevabilité et montrons que le passage de la concevabilité à la possibilité ne parvient pas à remplir tous les objectifs philosophiques que se fixe cette forme d'argumentation, en particulier lorsqu'elle vise à établir des thèses métaphysiques substantielles.

In his recent work, Duncan Pritchard defends a novel Wittgensteinian response to the problem of radical scepticism. The response makes essential use of a form of non-epistemicism about the nature of hinge-commitments. According to non-epistemicism, hinge-commitments cannot be known or grounded in rational considerations, such as reasons and evidence. On Pritchard's version of non-epistemicism, hinge-commitments express propositions but cannot be believed. This is the non-belief theory of hinge-commitments (NBT). One of the main reasons in favour of NBT over rival anti-sceptical Wittgensteinian views is that it has less theoretical costs and revisionary consequences than its rivals. In this paper, I argue that NBT fairs at least as bad as its rivals in terms of its theoretical costs and revisionism. In particular, I argue that NBT is inconsistent with certain kinds of philosophical disagreement; that it faces worries with mental-state scepticism; and that it faces difficulties in explaining how we can represent ourselves as committed to hinge-commitments.

This paper addresses the absurdity of a theory of the ontological grounds of consciousness which is known as "panpsychism." To this end, I first formulate panpsychism and present the theory's motivations. I then dismiss common intuitive objections to the theory. In the second chapter, I develop a novel objection that is based on panpsychism's moral implications. I take this objection to the be strongest version of the intuitive objection to panpsychism. In the third chapter, I examine how the panpsychist might avoid this objection. If the strongest version of the intuitive objection to panpsychism can, as I argue, be overcome, then I take it to be the case that dismissing panpsychism as "absurd" is unwarranted.

This paper is merely an MA thesis. Judge lightly!

I argue that beliefs about what appears possible are justified in much the same way as beliefs about what appears actual. I do so by chisholming, and then modalizing, the epistemic principle associated with phenomenal conservatism. The principle is tested against a number of examples, and it gives the intuitively correct results. I conclude by considering how it can be used to defend two controversial modal arguments, a Cartesian argument for dualism and an ontological argument for the existence of God.

I want to model a finite, fallible cognitive agent who imagines that p in the sense of mentally representing a scenario – a configuration of objects and properties – correctly described by p. I propose to capture imagination, so understood, via variably strict world quantifiers, in a modal framework including both possible and so-called impossible worlds. The latter secure lack of classical logical closure for the relevant mental states, while the variability of strictness captures how the agent imports information from actuality in the imagined non-actual scenarios. Imagination turns out to be highly hyperintensional, but not logically anarchic.
§1 sets the stage and impossible worlds are quickly introduced in §2. §3 proposes to model imagination via variably strict world quantifiers. §4 introduces the formal semantics. §5 argues that imagination has a minimal mereological structure validating some logical inferences. §6 deals with how imagination under-determines the represented contents. §7 proposes additional constraints on the semantics, validating further inferences. §8 describes some welcome invalidities. §9 examines the effects of importing false beliefs into the imag- ined scenarios. Finally, §10 hints at possible developments of the theory in the direction of two-dimensional semantics.

O argumento dos zumbis surgiu em 1974 em um artigo de Robert Kirk, mas foi com o livro The Conscious Mind (1996), de David Chalmers, que ele ganha um papel de destaque dentro da filosofia da mente. Tal argumento, que tem várias versões diferentes, tem como principal objetivo uma refutação do materialismo. De maneira muito resumida, ele diz que se for possível pensar em um zumbi físico, ser que seria fisicamente idêntico a um ser humano, mas sem estados qualitativos conscientes, ou seja, sem qualia, então tais estados não podem ser físicos. Se tais estados fossem físicos teria que faltar algo a tal zumbi. Deste modo, a única coisa que precisaria ser feita para refutar o materialismo seria mostrar que tal ser é concebível. No entanto, várias críticas surgiram e seu principal crítico, Daniel Dennett, tem ganhado apoio em sua defesa de que tais zumbis são logicamente impossíveis, ou seja, são inconcebíveis.

It is widely held that the intelligibility of modal metaphysics has been vindicated.  Quine’s arguments to the contrary supposedly confused analyticity with metaphysical necessity, and rigid with non-rigid designators.    But even if modal metaphysics is intelligible, it could be misconceived.  It could be that metaphysical necessity is not absolute necessity – the strictest “non-epistemic” (non-deontic) notion of necessity – and that no proposition of traditional metaphysical interest is necessary in every non-epistemic sense.  If there were nothing otherwise “uniquely metaphysically significant” about metaphysical necessity, then paradigmatic metaphysical necessities would be necessary in one sense of “necessary”, not necessary in another, and that would be it.  The question of whether they were necessary simpliciter would be like the question of whether the Parallel Postulate is true simpliciter – understood as a pure mathematical conjecture, rather than as a hypothesis about physical spacetime.  In a sense, the latter question has no objective answer.  In this article, I argue that paradigmatic questions of modal metaphysics are like the Parallel Postulate question.  I then discuss the deflationary ramifications of this argument.  I conclude with an alternative conception of the space of possibility.  According to this conception, there is no objective boundary between possibility and impossibility.  Along the way, I sketch an analogy between modal metaphysics and set theory.

In various arguments, Descartes relies on the principles that conceivability implies possibility and that inconceivability implies impossibility. Those principles are in tension with another Cartesian view about the source of modality, i.e. the doctrine of the free creation of eternal truths. In this paper, I develop a ‘two-modality’ interpretation of the doctrine of eternal truths which resolves the tension and I discuss how the resulting modal epistemology can still be relevant for the contemporary
discussion.

What, exactly, should ever be meant by "possible world"?
In this paper, without any decisive pretensions, an attempt will be made to give order to the question, putting forward the following theses: 1) the notion of "logical possibility" is too broad and ambiguous to assign it any essential role, in arguments aiming at some conclusions; 2) also the notion of "nomological necessity" (or "nomicity") shows signs of weakness and leaves room for merely epistemic possibilities (due to an imperfection in the knowledge, rather than to something attributable to "worlds"); 3) only an attenuated notion of nomicity can be referred to, when one wants to assume hypotheses that deny facts, in the course of reflection.

How do we know what is or is not possible? Traditionally, the answer was that whatever is conceivable is possible. However, since Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity and Identity and Necessity, this line of thought has fallen on hard times. Modal Skepticism replaced modal rationalism. This paper explores the issue of modal epistemology, arguing that through conceiving properly, we can have some reliable modal knowledge despite incidents of modal error.

The nature of possibility, intrinsically tied to the ontological status of essences, is a core question in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. At first sight, a Platonic interpretation, where essences and possibilities are conceived as entities separately existent from consciousness, seems plausible. However, this account is inacceptable in a phenomenological framework, where the reference to any non-actual dimension must be accounted for by constituting acts of consciousness. Husserl mentions two distinct levels of possibility: empty possibilities and motivated possibilities. Some appearances notwithstanding, it turns out that even empty possibilities (which provide the basis for formal ontology) rest on an experiential ground: empty possibilities appear as a borderline case of motivated possibilities. The experiential basis of empty possibilities is the ‘absolute fact’ (Absolute Tatsache) according to which something in general there is (for a consciousness). However, the notion of ‘absolute fact’ leads to inextricable paradoxes and neither the idea of contingency nor the one of essentiality can be meaningfully applied to ‘it’. A way out from this theoretical cul-de-sac can be found by reading the general notion of possibility through the Husserlian notion of Vermöglichkeit.  By interpreting possibilities as Vermöglichkeiten, we end up conceiving of them as ‘emergent properties’ born by the originating ‘encounter’ of consciousness and transcendent ‘otherness’. This does not imply any ‘naturalization’ of consciousness, but affirms the ontological priority of actuality and motivation in the definition of the space of possibilities. The foundational prominence of actuality and motivation does not lead to a contingentist view of possibilities, while not supporting a Platonic interpretation either. We must make room for a vision of reality and possibility where motivation (and teleology) lies at its core. This implies that what is truly grounding should not be conceived after the model of ‘solidity’, as a thing-like substance, but rather after a teleological model, as resilience of ideal goals in intentional processes. The teleology of consciousness neither mirrors, nor creates limits and laws, but actively looks for them and by so doing let them emerge. In the last instance, being is regarded as founded in an “axiological” dimension exercised on actual givenness and driven by the instances of possibilization. What is recognized a parte subjecti as possibilization is to be represented a parte objecti as emergence of intelligible properties.

This essay aims to redress the contention that epistemic possibility cannot be a guide to the principles of modal metaphysics. I introduce a novel epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics. I argue that the interaction between the two-dimensional framework and the mereological parthood relation, which is super-rigid, enables epistemic possibilities and truthmakers with regard to parthood to be a guide to its metaphysical profile. I specify, further, a two-dimensional formula encoding the relation between the epistemic possibility and verification of essential properties obtaining and their metaphysical possibility or verification. I then generalize the approach to haecceitistic properties, and examine the Julius Caesar problem as a test case.

An important yet often unacknowledged aspect of moral discourse is the phenomenon of moral impossibility, which challenges more widely accepted models of moral discussion and deliberation as choice among possible options. Starting from observations of the new possibilities of anti-immigrant attitudes and hate crimes which have been described by the press as something being 'unleashed', the paper asks what it means for something to enter or not the sphere of possibility in the moral sense, and whether it is ever desirable for something to remain or be pushed back outside the realm of the morally possible. Three forms of moral impossibility are identified: the unconceived, the unthinkable, and moral incapacity. Through the discussion of a stark fictional example of moral impossibility, the paper concludes that while the category of moral impossibility cannot settle disagreement, it sheds light on some of the most fundamental aspects of the moral life.

Alleged self-evidence aside, conceivability arguments are one of the main reasons in favor of the claim that there is a Hard Problem. These arguments depend on the appealing Kripkean intuition that there is no difference between appearances and reality in the case of consciousness. I will argue that this intuition rests on overlooking a distinction between cognitive access and consciousness, which has received recently important empirical support. I will show that there are good reasons to believe that the intuition is misguided---at least on the reading that the conceivability arguments require---and hence that the arguments are unsupported. This, in turn, alleviates the Hard Problem but leaves us with what I think is a not easy problem.

In "Le possible et le réel" Henri Bergson offers an influential critique of the modal category of possibility: traditional ideas that possibility precedes actuality invert the real relation of priority, and express an inability to apprehend the continual creation of unforeseeable novelty in experience. This article shows how Bergson's ideas concerning possibility and novelty are involved in his inheritance of a modern concept of genius as a principle of fine art production. Only in grasping the nature of Bergson's philosophy as a 'metaphysics of genius', I contend, is it possible to understand adequately not only his critique of prior possibility and conceptions of novelty but also the positive conception of modality that he advances in the essay according to an idea of the retroactivity of the possible. In conclusion, I argue that this reflection on retroactivity represents a new development in Bergson's thought that he is unable to develop fully precisely because he is tied to an idea of genius interpreted as a function of the will.

The objective of this paper is to defend the non-reductive thesis of phenomenal consciousness. This paper will give an overview of the arguments for the non-reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness and justify why the reductionist approach is implausible in the context of explaining phenomenal subjective experience. The debate between reductionist and non-reductionist on the project of Demystifying and Mystifying phenomenal consciousness is driven by two fundamental assumptions-1) Reductive-Naturalistic Objectivism, 2) Phenomenal Realism. There are several arguments for the irreducibility of phenomenal consciousness; this paper will focus on the inverted spectrum argument, knowledge argument, and the conceivability argument.

The zombie argument attempts to argue from the conceivability of zombies to the possibility of zombies, and from the possibility of zombies to the falsity of physicalism. Although the argument has been around for a relatively long time, it was not until David Chalmers published The Conscious Mind in 1996 that philosophers started to take zombies seriously again. In a bid to furnish independent support for key premises in the zombie argument, Chalmers published a paper in 2002 attempting to establish an entailment from one kind of conceiving to one kind of possibility. In this thesis, I raise concerns with Chalmers’s conceivability apparatus, and attempt to render his zombie argument against physicalism toothless. It should be noted from the outset that I do not intend to engage in metaphysical debates about the nature of consciousness; I intend only to show that Chalmers’s version of the zombie argument fails to bring a convincing case against physicalists, even with his conceivability apparatus in place.

Three points of view on the problem of the answerability of philosophical questions are developed:
a) the traditional view that the questions are perfectly genuine but just very difficult;
b) what I call the 'nonsensicalist' view, characteristic of logical positivists and Wittgensteinians, that they are largely meaningless pseudo-problems;
c) the 'mysterian' or transcendental naturalist view that they are genuine problems but ones that our intellects are unequipped, or at least very ill-equipped, to handle.

This is the original, longer draft for my entry on 'Hume' in the 'The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination' (Amy Kind (ed.), London: Routledge, 2016). — Please always cite the Routledge version, unless there are passages concerned that did not make it into the Handbook for reasons of length. — This chapter overviews Hume’s thoughts on the nature and the role of imagining, with an almost exclusive focus on the first book of his Treatise of Human Nature. Over the course of this text, Hume draws and discusses three important distinctions among our conscious mental episodes (or what he calls ‘perceptions’): (i) between impressions (including perceptual experiences) and ideas (including recollections, imaginings and occurrent beliefs); (ii) between ideas of the memory and ideas of the imagination; and (iii), among the ideas of the imagination, between ideas of the judgement (i.e. occurrent beliefs) and ideas of the fancy (i.e. imaginings). I discuss each distinction in turn, also in connection to contemporary views on imagining. In addition, I briefly consider Hume’s views on the imagination as a faculty aimed at the production of ideas, as well as on the role that imagining plays in the wider context of our mental lives, notably in the acquisition of modal knowledge and in the comprehension of, and resistance to, stories and opinions that we take to be false or fictional.

Does consciousness exist?  In “The Meta-Problem of Consciousness” (MPC) David Chalmers sketches an argument for illusionism, i.e., the view that it does not.  The key premise is that it would be a coincidence if our beliefs about consciousness were true, given that the explanation of those beliefs is independent of their truth.  In this article, I clarify and assess this argument.  I argue that our beliefs about consciousness are peculiarly invulnerable to undermining, whether or not their contents are indubitable or even obvious.  However, the reason that they are peculiarly invulnerable to undermining points to a fundamental flaw in modal arguments for dualism.

Doctoral Dissertation, official submission 25.05.2017. Outline: "Chapter 1: "The Ontology of Possibility" presents Lewis's modal realism (LMR)
and its analysis of possibility. In particular, it discusses Lewis's stance on modal
truth, which he takes to be absolutely literal. For Lewis, if it is true that there
could have been talking donkeys, then it is literally true that there is world
where there are real donkeys that talk. I argue that it is this view on truth
that lies at the heart of Lewis's rejection of representational, so-called ersatz
approaches to modality and possible worlds, as it is only in virtue of the literal
truth at Lewis's worlds that he can reduce modality to non-modal facts.
This has been challenged, of course. Scott Shalkowski in 'The Ontological
Ground of the Alethic Modality' maintains that no such reduction is possible.
According to Shalkowski, also LMR has to presuppose an unanalysed notion of
possibility, since if it doesn't, its ontological foothold for modality---the plurality
of concrete possible worlds proposed by Lewis---is arbitrary. In the section 'On
Bottlecaps in Hackensack', I show that Shalkowski's argument is unsound, as
it fails to appreciate what Divers has called 'extraordinary' modalities. These
extraordinary cases are exactly the point where modal notions reduce to nonmodal
notions in LMR, and this is ultimately why Lewis's reduction succeeds.
Chapter 2 "LMR and Impossibility" embarks on the actual topic of this thesis,
which is, after all, not possibility but its contrary. It first discusses whether
Lewis in his argumentation for concrete possible worlds accidentally committed
himself also to impossible worlds. After debating the (few) strengths and
(manifold) weaknesses of the so-called 'argument from paraphrase' of everyday
language quantifications over 'ways things could, and could not have been', it
turns to a critical evaluation of the most elaborate proposal for concrete worlds
that are not possible: Kiourti's 'Impossibilist Genuine Realism' (IGR). It is argued
that even though LMR's literalness provides the strongest motivation to
introduce concrete impossible objects into ones ontology, IGR fails to elucidate
what the literal truth amounts to in inconsistent descriptions. It falls prey to a
dilemma: either, truth at its non-Lewisian6 worlds is merely assigned, or IGR
itself is literally inconsistent.
But that IGR is unsatisfactory as an extension of LMR does not mean that
LMR has no need to incorporate impossible content. The second half of the
chapter therefore addresses LMR's virtues and drawbacks as a foundation for a
semantics of intentionality. It is argued that one of LMR's biggest virtues as such
a foundation is that its ontology does not distort the intentional content---or, as
I will call it, that it is faithful to the intentional act in question. Nevertheless,
it is unable to do so in many cases of impossible content. Despite Lewis's
ingenious attempts to incorporate impossible content into his possibilist setting,
some impossible content cannot be accounted for. This content includes what I
have called 'extraordinary impossibilities', which are negations of a specific class
of literal ontological truths of LMR, over which already IGR stumbled. Since
IGR cannot fulfil its ambition to provide a literal semantics for impossibility
statements, and it seems that ersatz 'impossible worlds' are in principle unable
to do so, the discussion turns to a very different approach to intentionality which
nevertheless promises the literal truth of impossibilities: Meinong's theory of
objects.
Chapter 3 lays out the foundations of Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie and
the intentional semantics built on them. It elucidates how Meinong's theory,
though very different from Lewis's, is driven by similar considerations on truth
and literal predication. One of Meinong's core principles is the so-called Principle
of the Independence of the Sosein from Being, according to which objects
need not exist in order to literally possess (or instantiate) the properties intentionally
attributed to them---the totality of these properties being what he
calls the object's 'Sosein', its 'being-so'. This principle is similar to Lewis's approach
to truth as explained in the discussion of his rejection of representational
approaches to modality in chapter 1, and, as will be shown at the end of the
chapter, the demand of literalness leads to the demise of object theory.
Furthermore, Meinong's theory stipulates a plenitude principle for objects.
His Intentionality Thesis claims that every intentional act is directed to an
object. However, this object need not exist, and may well have incompatible
properties, i.e. it can be an impossible object. It is this principle that together
with the Principle of Independence of the Sosein from Being leads the theory
of objects into a dilemma it cannot solve without sacrificing its demand of
the literal truth of intentional property ascriptions. This dilemma is in fact
very similar to the problem IGR encounters: IGR had to accept that either, it
cannot claim that every (impossible) statement whatsoever is true at some of
its concrete worlds, or it is an inconsistent theory. In both cases, then, it is the
double burden of literalness and plenitude that leads to a dilemma.
Chapter 4 Plenitude and Faithfulness returns to the question of how LMR
can be amended to account non-trivially for impossible content. It assesses
which of the two demands, literalness or plenitude, ought to be given up. I
argue that plenitude should not be abandoned if the aim is to provide a materially
adequate semantics for intentionality, and I also argue that this should be
our aim. Since literalness is what prevents both IGR and object theory from
providing a sufficient plenitude of impossibilities to do justice to intentional phenomena,
the conclusion that intentionality and impossibility discourse require
a representational semantics is inevitable. However, the sacrifice of literalness
requires some adjustments in the interpretation of intentional content, i.e. what
was called intentional faithfulness in chapter 2. These changes are discussed in
section 4.2.
Chapter 5 Veracity, Mendacity, and Granularity then discusses so-called 'hybrid'
approaches to 'impossible worlds', viz. theories that add abstract representational
world-surrogates to LMR in order to account for impossible content.
Surprisingly, it turns out that a representational interpretation of 'impossible
worlds' on its own is still insufficient for providing plenitudinous impossible content
while maintaining Lewis's analysis of possibility and its literal account of
truth. The proposals by Greg Restall (1997) and Francesco Berto (2010) build
their truth about impossibility on Lewisian literal truth, and thus inherit the
expressive limitations that derive from it. A different approach by Edwin Mares
(1997) is much better equipped to overcome those obstacles, as it provides the
means to systematically misrepresent the Lewisian ontology, or, as I want to call
it, to lie about it. Section 5.2.3 Systematic Mendacity at Work develops a formal
system along the lines of (Mares 1997) and (Priest 2005), which incorporates
these systemic misrepresentations.
As Mares's theory is coached in the framework of Barwise and Perry's theory
of situations, Barwise and Perry's situation semantics is discussed to answer
the ontological questions that Mares leaves open about his approach. Lastly,
I will reply to an objection put forward by Kiourti against Mares's approach,
which claims that its expressive power is too limited to provide an impossibilist
plenitude.
The concluding chapter of this thesis summarizes its most important points
and the advantages of (Mares 1997) over its competitors. The main conclusion
to be drawn is that there is no literal truth to tell about impossibility, but that
this is not all there is to say about it.

"We cannot tell that we are constantly splitting into duplicate selves because our consciousness rides smoothly along only one path in the endlessly forking chains."

This forthcoming paper will explore some highly speculative - even preposterous - but seductively appealing recent models of the physics of time-space and dimensionality.
It will be argued that although these models are seemingly impossible to test in the external world, they may have a profound truth and validity in the internal world of the human unconscious mind.

Psychoanalytic clinical material will be presented which convincingly suggests that we all live, emotionally, just as much in the worlds of possibility as we do in the world of " external reality ". For example, the loss of a baby may bring devastating grief or depression to a mother as much (if not more) for mourning the losses of imagined possible futures for that lost child, and for that potential mother, as for the loss of the  " actual baby. "

Whether or not parallel worlds and alternate realities and timelines exist in the physical world seems highly un-possible, and fraught with infinite contradiction. But in the unconscious world of the cognitive-emotional mind, we may be certain not only of their existence, but of their intense and profound psychological influence. To ignore the importance of a person's hopes and dreams of possibility in the formation of emotionally real losses and joys, even if deeply unconscious, is to forego the chance to truly understand their human self.

Of course, all this leaves wide open the issue of where, in the mind, theories of Physics - indeed of all scientific disciplines - are conceived.

  At the very least, this paper argues the importance of "mental" parallel universes and alternate realities in the formation and perseverance of depressive feelings.

The film "Mr. Nobody" (2009) and others are used to explicate these ideas.

1. Introduction. Que peut nous apprendre la science-fiction de nos progrès scientifiques et technologiques à venir ? Je voudrais aborder cette question, non pas en rentrant dans le détail de la science-fiction, qui est un genre assez foisonnant, assez bariolé, puisqu'on y retrouve des choses vraiment différentes, mais d'une manière assez générale et plutôt extérieure. Je partirai de certaines caractéristiques du progrès, pour ensuite me tourner vers l'interprétation de la science-fiction comme expérience de pensée ou expérimentation mentale, et enfin, je terminerai sur l'impression que l'on peut avoir que la science-fiction « doit bien » nous dire quelque chose de nos progrès à venir.

This paper moves from a disagreement with those interpreters who explain Kant’s doctrine of real possibility in terms of possible worlds. It seems to me that a possible world framework is too much indebted to the Leibnizian metaphysics of modality and, therefore, cannot serve to make sense of Kant’s theses. Leibniz’s theory of possibility, indeed, has been deeply criticized in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (CPR). Interestingly enough, however, Kant’s principal argument for rejecting that the field of what is possible is greater than the field of what is real was already anticipated by Leibniz. However, Leibniz employed it to demonstrate that there cannot be more than one actual world only (the others being purely possible ones). Moving from this fact, I argue that there is a certain tension between what Leibniz says about the actual world and his commitment to a plurality of possible worlds conceived as ideas in God’s mind. The first part of my paper is devoted to show that such a tension can be traced back to Leibniz’s claims about the relation between the possible and the real. In the second part, then, I maintain that Kant’s theory of real possibility grows from a dissatisfaction with (and a rejection of) Leibniz’s attempted solution to the problem of characterizing a kind of possibility narrower than the merely logical one and, nonetheless, not identical with existence. Finally, I present a short account of Kant’s theory of real possibility, based on the notion of transcendental conditions as conditions of possibility of experience, showing how it works in the case of the forms of intuition.

During the last quarter of a century, a number of philosophers have become attracted to the idea that necessity can be analyzed in terms of a hyperintensional notion of essence. One challenge for proponents of this view is to give a plausible explanation of our modal knowledge. The goal of this paper is to develop a strategy for meeting this challenge. My approach rests on an account of modality that I developed in previous work, and which analyzes modal properties in terms of the notion of a metaphysical law (which is a generalization of the concept of an essential truth). I discuss what information about the metaphysical laws (including essential truths) is required for modal knowledge. Moreover, I describe two ways in which we might be able to acquire this information. The first way employs inference to the best explanation. The metaphysical laws, including the essential truths, play a crucial role in causal and grounding explanations and we can gain knowledge of these laws by abductive inferences from facts of which we have perceptual or a priori knowledge. The second way of gaining information about the metaphysical laws rests on knowledge that is partly constitutive of competence with the concepts that are needed to express the relevant information. Finally, I consider how knowledge of the metaphysical laws can be used to establish modal claims, paying special attention to the much-discussed connection between conceiving and possibility.

In this paper, I present the following argument:
(1) All knowledge from fiction is from imagination
(2) All knowledge from imagination is of possibility
(3) So, all knowledge from fiction is of possibility
Moreover, some knowledge is from fiction, so (1)-(3) are non-vacuously true.

Claims of neutrality, eidetic insight, and ahistoricity have squarely placed transcendental phenomenology in the camp of philosophical approaches unwilling and/or unable to engage in social critique. Take, for instance, the skepticism surrounding Husserlian methods as resources for feminist inquiry. Concerns here range from phenomenology's inability to do critical justice to the normalized and the contingent, or to the normatively complex dynamic between knowledge and power, or further still, to the radically other/different/novel/strange. 2 And while some sought to defend the import of Husserlian resources for feminist philosophy, 3 the view remains marginal at best. Contrary to this, I argue that Husserlian phenomenology grants us powerful tools for critically investigating the historical forces shaping our present reality, doing justice not solely to their epistemic weight, but their normative weight also.

In the paper, I discuss Robert Kirk’s attempt to refute the zombie argument against materialism by demonstrating, “in a way that is intuitively appealing as well as cogent”, that the idea of phenomenal zombies involves incoherence. Kirk’s argues that if one admits that a world of zombies z is conceivable, one should also admit the conceivability of a certain transformation from such a world to a world z* that satisfies a description D, and it is arguable that D is incoherent. From which, Kirk suggests, it follows that the idea of zombies is incoherent. I argue that Kirk’s argument has several minor deficiencies and two major flaws. First, he takes for granted that cognitive mental states are physical (cognitive physicalism), although a zombist is free to—and would better—reject this view. Second, he confuses elements of different scenarios of transformation, none of which results in the incoherent description D.

What is the sublime? This entry defines the "sublime" and presents its historical context, focusing on its conceptual and philosophical aspects. The sublime denotes an intense, charged emotion with high arousal and containing a mixed valence (i.e. negative-to-positive). A sublime experience is an aesthetic experience of uplift and elevation in response to a powerful or vast object that is otherwise often experienced as menacing or overwhelming. Yet the experience is overall positive and pleasing. Second, this entry surveys several themes disputed in the literature: the sublime's relation to beauty, fear, and awe, why it is pleasing, and its being self-referential or reflexive. Third, the entry summarizes recent empirical research on the topic. The sublime has received relatively little scientific attention, only beginning in the past decade. A prominent empirical approach to the sublime conceptualizes it as having a fear component, although some recent studies have begun to question this. Finally, the entry concludes with a reflection on the sublime and the possible.

According to Williamson (The philosophy of philosophy, Blackwell, Oxford, 2007), our knowledge of metaphysical necessities and possibilities is just a “spe- cial case” of our knowledge of counterfactual conditionals. This subsumption of modal under counterfactual think- ing mainly serves a methodological role: to sign the end of “philosophical exceptionalism” in modal epistemol- ogy, namely the view that our knowledge of metaphysical modalities is obtained by means of a special, dedicated, possibly a priori, capacity. In this paper, I show that a counterfactual approach to modal epistemology is struc- turally similar to more traditional “conceivability-based” approaches. On this basis, I then show that the counterfac- tual approach suffers some of the same problems and I con- clude that it is still based on a quite exceptional capacity to determine the truth of modal metaphysical claims. Given that, for Williamson, the epistemology of thought experi- ments should also be subsumed under the counterfactual approach, the problem I raise in this paper has conse- quences for his approach to thought experiments.

The conceivability of zombies means that the concept of zombies is coherent; that is, it does not entail a contradiction. A-type theorists argue that consciousness is conceptually definable, and so zombies are inconceivable. However, B-type theories insist that the concept of zombies does not involve a contradiction, although they deny the metaphysical possibility of zombies. This paper first shows that, since the arguments that support the inconceivability of zombies already import the functionalizability of consciousness, they are begging the question. However, A-type theorists can legitimately claim that the conceivability supporters are also questions begging, since they presuppose that consciousness is not functionalizable. I suppose that both A-type and B-type theories might beg the question. Nevertheless, I prove that zombies are still conceivable for conceivability is consistent with circularity but the inconceivability is not.

How do we know what’s (metaphysically) possible and impossible? Arguments from Kripke and Putnam suggest that possibility is not merely a matter of (coherent) conceivability/imaginability. For example, we can coherently imagine that Hesperus and Phosphorus are distinct objects even though they are not possibly distinct. Despite this apparent problem, we suggest, nevertheless, that imagination plays an important role in an adequate modal epistemology. When we discover what is possible or what is impossible, we generally exploit important connections between what is possible and what we can coherently imagine. We can often come to knowledge of metaphysical modality a priori.