Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology

This book collects original essays on the epistemology of modality and related issues in modal metaphysics and philosophical methodology.

The contributors utilize both the newer ＂metaphysics-first＂ and the more traditional ＂epistemology-first＂ approaches to these issues. The chapters on modal epistemology mostly focus on the problem of how we can gain knowledge of possibilities, which have never been actualized, or necessities which are not provable either by logico-mathematical reasoning or by linguistic competence alone. These issues are closely related to some of the central issues in philosophical methodology, notably: to what extent is the armchair methodology of philosophy a reliable guide for the formation of beliefs about what is possible and necessary. This question also relates to the nature of thought experiments that are extensively used in science and philosophy.

Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the epistemology and metaphysics of modality, as well as those whose work is concerned with philosophical methodology more generally.

Anand Jayprakash Vaidya is Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University, USA. His research focuses on epistemology and philosophy of mind. For 25 years he has worked on the epistemology of modality and how it relates to problems in the philosophy of mind, such as the nature of consciousness.

Dusko Prelevic is Associate Professor at Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia. His research focuses on the epistemology of modality, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. For 13 years he has critically examined various aspects of physicalist research programme and modal rationalist account of our modal knowledge.