Agentive Modals and Agentive Modality: A Cautionary Tale

American Philosophical Quarterly 61 (2):139–155 (2024)
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Abstract

In this paper, we consider recent attempts to metaphysically explain agentive modality in terms of conditionals. We suggest that the best recent accounts face counterexamples, and more worryingly, they take some agentive modality for granted. In particular, the ability to perform basic actions features as a primitive in these theories. While it is perfectly acceptable for a semantics of agentive modal claims to take some modality for granted in getting the extension of action claims correct, a metaphysical explanation of agentive modality cannot, at least not in the way that conditional approaches to agentive modality do. We argue that this problem was present even in the classical conditional analysis. By a pessimistic induction, we suggest that, probably, no conditional approach to agentive modality will succeed.

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Author Profiles

Robert H. Wallace
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Tim Kearl
University of Glasgow

Citations of this work

Epistemic Cans.Tim Kearl & Christopher Willard-Kyle - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
Epistemic control without voluntarism.Timothy R. Kearl - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):95-109.

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References found in this work

How to defeat opposition to Moore.Ernest Sosa - 1999 - Philosophical Perspectives 13:137-49.
Finkish dispositions.David Kellogg Lewis - 1997 - Philosophical Quarterly 47 (187):143-158.
Agents’ Abilities.Romy Jaster - 2020 - Berlin, New York: De Gruyter.

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