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Conceivability, rigidity and counterpossibles

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Abstract

Wright (In Gendler and Hawthorne (Eds.), Conceivability and possibility, 2002) rejects some dominant responses to Kripke’s modal argument against the mind-body identity theory, and instead he proposes a new response that draws on a certain understanding of counterpossibles. This paper offers some defensive remarks on behalf of Lewis’ objection to that argument, and it argues that Wright’s proposal fails to fully accommodate the conceivability intuitions, and that it is dialectically ineffective.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, David Hume Tower, George Square, EH8 9JX, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Jesper Kallestrup

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  1. Jesper Kallestrup
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Correspondence to Jesper Kallestrup.

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Kallestrup, J. Conceivability, rigidity and counterpossibles. Synthese 171, 377–386 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9319-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9319-5

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