Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-hqlzj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-19T12:18:08.861Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Scanlon’s modal metaphysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Gideon Rosen
Gideon Rosen*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
*
Email: grosen@princeton.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Being Realistic About Reasons (Oxford University Press, 2014) T. M. Scanlon argues that particular fact about reasons are explained by contingent non-normative facts together with pure normative principles. A question then arises about the modal status of these pure principles. Scanlon maintains that they are necessary in a sense, and suggests that they are ‘metaphysically’ necessary. I argue that the best view for Scanlon to take, given his other commitments, is that these pure normative principles are metaphysically contingent in some cases and necessary only in a weaker sense.

Keywords

Scanlonmetaethicsrealismnormativitymodality

Information

Type
Tim Scanlon's Being Realistic about Reasons; author meets critics
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 47 , Issue 6 , 2017 , pp. 856 - 876
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bird, A. 2005. “The Dispositionalist Conception of Laws.” Foundations of Science 10: 353–370. 10.1007/s10699-004-5259-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackburn, S. 1993. Supervenience Revisited. In his Essays in Quasi-Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dowell, J., and Sobel, D.. 2017. “Advice for Non-analytical Naturalists.” In Reading Parfit, edited by Kirchin, S.. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fine, K. 1994. “Essence and Modality.” Philosophical Perspectives 8: 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, K. 2002. “The Varieties of Realism.” In Conceivability and Possibility, edited by Gendler, T., and Hawthorne, J., 253–282.Google Scholar
Fine, K. 2012. “A Guide to Ground.” In Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Correia, F., and Schnieder, B., 37–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gendler, T. 2000. “The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance.” Journal of Philosophy 97 (2): 55–81. 10.2307/2678446CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, B., and Wright, C.. 1994. “Nominalism and the Contingency of Abstract Objects.” Mind 103: 169–184. 10.1093/mind/103.410.169CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacPherson, T. 2012. “Ethical Non-Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Supervenience.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 7: 205–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maddy, P. 1997. Naturalism in Mathematics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. 2011. On What Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. 1976. “Posits and Reality.” In The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, rev. edn. 246–54. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rosen, G. 2006. “The Limits of Contingency.” In Identity and Modality, edited by MacBride, F., 13–39. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rosen, G. 2015. “Real Definition.” Analytic Philosophy 56 (3): 189–209. 10.1111/phib.2015.56.issue-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, G. forthcoming. “Normative Necessity.” In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine, edited by Dumitru, M.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 2014. Being Realistic about Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199678488.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shoemaker, S. 1980. “Causality and Properties.” In Time and Cause, edited by van Inwagen, P., 109–135. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swoyer, C. 1982. “The Nature of Natural Laws.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 60: 203–223. 10.1080/00048408212340641CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, C. 1992. Truth and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar