“What use is conceptual possibility?” by Peter Kung

Sometimes philosophers claim that we can learn philosophically valuable results from a proposition’s conceptual possibility. In this paper, I will examine this notion of conceptual possibility. I will be interested in two claims about conceptual possibility. First, several authors have advanced the view that conceptual possibility properly constrained provides us with evidence for metaphysical possibility: conceptual possibility is a guide to metaphysical possibility. Second, philosophers sometimes argue that the conceptual possibility of a proposition can be philosophically informative in the absence of evidence for the proposition’s metaphysical possibility. I argue against both claims.

Suppose we have a concept of X and we are curious what being X entails. Our concept of X might leave it open whether x is F. That can certainly happen when the proposition <x is F> is a posteriori. However when <x is F> is agreed on all sides to be an a priori matter, can we can make any sense of the claim that our concept of X leaves it open whether X is F while, at the same time, the conceptual possibility of X being F is a significant result? There are two situations to consider: first, that we have definitively concluded that X being F entails no contradiction, and second, that we are just so far unable to see any contradiction in X being F. In the first situation, we would be in a position to conclude that X being F is metaphysically possible after all, making the appeal to conceptual possibility gratuitous. The second case is the interesting one: we often appeal to conceptual possibility in just those cases where we are not in a position to draw out all the entailments of our concepts. The question in the second case is how worried we should be that our finding a proposition conceptually possible is driven by our less-than-ideal epistemic situation, raising the concern that we simply have not reflected carefully enough on whether the proposition is in fact coherent. I argue that this worry should be given much more credence than conceptual possibility’s defenders have allowed.

Philosophy Seminar Series
Date: Thursday, 20 October 2016
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: AS3 #05-23
Speaker: A/P Peter Kung
Moderator: Dr Qu Hsueh Ming

About the Speaker:

Peter Kung is Associate Professor of Philosophy and former Department Chair at Pomona College in Claremont, California. His research centers on two areas: the philosophy of mind, in particular imagination and thought experiments; and epistemology, where he focuses on the limits of skeptical challenges and the proper treatment of probabilistic reasoning. He has published a number of articles in leading peer-reviewed journals, and recently co-edited Knowledge Through Imagination (2016, Oxford University Press) with Amy Kind.

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