Modal rasjonalisme : tenkbarhet som en pålitelig kilde til modal kunnskap

Modal rationalism is the view that conceivability is a reliable apriori guide to modal knowledge. This connection is trivial when we take it as a guide to epistemic modality, but con-ceivability is taken as a guide to metaphysical modality – a connection which needs to be ex-plained, as there is no obvious connection between conceivability and metaphysical modality. David Chalmers develops a form of modal rationalism based on modal monism, which solves this problem: If there is only one form of modality, conceivability is a reliable apriori guide to modal knowledge. As will be shown in the first chapter of this thesis, Chalmers’ modal rationalism thus seems as a working modal epistemology. In the second chapter, I present how Antonella Malozzi argues that Chalmers’ modal monism takes an epistemic approach to metaphysical possibility. With conceivability taken as a reliable guide to genuine metaphysical modality, this raises a di-lemma for modal rationalism: Construct an epistemic form of modal monism and abandon genu-ine metaphysical possibility, or construct a form of modal dualism but give up conceivability as a reliable guide to modal knowledge. The first route is Chalmers’ usual approach to modality. Though in later writings, Chalmers offer an alternative theory which is open for a dualist approach to modality, with both an epistemic and a metaphysical modal space. Chalmers constructs this theory as a theory where the two modal spaces are connected, such that, even on this dualist ap-proach, conceivability could be taken as a reliable apriori guide to modal knowledge. This alterna-tive theory, and how it constructs a connection between the two modal spaces, is the focus of the final chapter of the thesis