An Imaginative Person’s Guide to Objective Modality

Imagination is a source of evidence for objective modality. It is through this epistemic connection that the idea of modality first gains traction in our intellectual life. A proper theory of modality should be able to explain our imagination’s modal epistemic behaviors. This chapter highlights a peculiar asymmetry regarding epistemic defeat for imagination-based modal justification. Whereas imagination-based evidence for possibility cannot be undermined by information about the causal origin of our imaginings, unimaginability-based evidence for impossibility can be undermined by information about the causal origin of the unimaginability. It is argued that an acceptance of S4 over S5 as the true logic for objective modality best explains this epistemic asymmetry