Conceivability, rigidity and counterpossibles

Jesper Kallestrup

pp. 377-386

in: Jesper Kallestrup, Duncan Pritchard (eds), The philosophy of Crispin Wright, Synthese 171 (3), 2009.

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.

Cited authors

Wright Crispin