Modality and Explanatory Reasoning
by Boris Kment F'11. Now available from Oxford University Press.
Since the ground-breaking work of Saul Kripke, David Lewis and others in the 1960’s and 70’s, one dominant interest of analytic philosophers has been in modal truths, which concern the question what is possible and what is necessary. However, considerable controversy remains over the source and nature of necessity. In Modality and Explanatory Reasoning, Boris Kment takes a novel approach to the study of modality that places special emphasis on understanding the origin of modal notions in everyday thought.
Kment argues that the concepts of necessity and possibility originated as useful ancillaries to a common type of thought experiment—counterfactual reasoning—that allows us to investigate explanatory connections. This cognitive routine is closely related to the controlled experiments of empirical science. Necessity is defined in terms of causation and other forms of explanation such as grounding, a relation that connects metaphysically fundamental facts to non-fundamental ones. Therefore, contrary to a widespread view, explanation is more fundamental than modality. The study of modal facts is important for philosophy, not because these facts are of much metaphysical interest in their own right, but because they provide evidence about explanatory relationships.