Concepção & Possibilidade : Reflexões sobre a epistemologia da modalidade

Abstract

The central problem of this dissertation is: does conception, as a cognitive activity, give us knowledge about the alletic modality? The thesis that I defend is that conceptual activity is not enough to give us knowledge about the alletic modality, namely knowledge about possibility, impossibility and necessity. This discussion is part of the scope of the epistemology of the modality, an area in which we propose a treatment of the question of how we know, if we have to know, what is necessary, possible, contingent, essential and accidental for the variety of entities and types of entities that exists. Among the various answers given to the problem of how we know if something is possible, we have the answer that it is through conception that we obtain this knowledge. This response motivates and sustains numerous arguments in various philosophical debates, from metaphysics to political philosophy - are known as modal or conceptualizing arguments, arguments that state in their premises or conclusions that things are possible, impossible, or necessary. An emblematic and contemporary example is the famous argument of the zombies, which David J. Chalmers defends in The Conscious Mind: in search of a theory of conscious experience (1997). Such an argument suggests the conception of human beings physically identical to us, but without phenomenal consciousness (qualitative states of experience - qualia), and this conception supposes such possibility. Then, from this possibility concludes the falsity of physicalism (thesis that holds that everything that exists is physical). Does our cognitive activity of conception, exemplified above, give us knowledge about these possibilities? Is the conception sufficient to sustain such strong conclusions? During this dissertation I argue in favor of a negative answer to these two questions. For this reason, a criterion of possibility that gives us modal knowledge must be a domain criterion coextensive with that of the alletic modality. In this way, if conception were a good response, all elements of the conception domain would be elements of the domain of possibility and vice versa. I maintain that an analysis of the episodic character of consciousness, qualia, shows us a counterexample to the coextensionality of conception to possibility - there is something possible that is inconceivable. Once we lose the inconceivable-impossible pair, we argue that we also lose the conceivable-possible pair through the loss of the principle of identity at the ontological level – which leads us to philosophical surrealism (the world is not conceptual at the metaphysical level). In fact, if we do not have coextensionality, it follows that conception is not a guide to the knowledge of possibility (of the alletic modality). Finally, I confront this result with the notion of ideal conceptualization of the form suggested by David J. Chalmers in Does conceivability entails possibility? (2002), in this I argue that this notion is not sufficient to answer the difficulties posed by the counterexample, therefore, it is not enough to establish the conception as a criterion of possibility or guide to modal alletic knowledge. This whole company is made in three moments. In the first moment, I analyze the notion of possibility (chapters 1 and 2). In the second moment, I analyze the notion of conception as cognitive activity and the relation with the idea of cognitive closure (chapters 3 and 4). In the third and last moment, I confront the arguments in favor of conception as a criterion of possibility, where I defend the aforementioned thesis, as well as reflect on the philosophical consequences of the results obtained (Chapters 5 and 6).