Modality and Anti-Metaphysics (Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy, 1150)

This work has two principal aims, firstly it intends to defend metaphysics, chiefly against logical positivists, and secondly to defend objective non-logical necessity and possibility against empiricist views which hold that these very notions are unintelligible. The book contains four chapters. In chapter one the author examines philosophies which have been thought to seek the elimination of metaphysics. He argues that that the common view that Hume considered all metaphysics meaningless and sought its elimination is the misguided result of the positivist appropriation of Hume. Chapter two is informed by developments in contemporary anti-realism and puts forward the argument that the initial issue is not that of realism/anti-realism about modality, but that of primitivism/anti-primitivism. Chapter three attempts to illustrate how modal projectivism is ill-placed to account for "de re" modality, the author then goes on to expand upon the distinction between logical and mataphysical modality. Finally, chapter four expands further upon the "de re/de dicto" distinction. It discusses the conceptions of the modality involved in the notion of verifiability in principle which can be extracted from the works of the logical positivists themselves. The work concludes with a brief comment on empiricism and essentialism in relation to the conflation of logical possibility and substantive possibility "de re".