Felipe Morales Carbonell

ef.em.carbonell@gmail.com
okf@scholar.social
fmoralesc@github.com / vim-pandoc
Research Talks Teaching CV

Upcoming and Work in Progress

  • (paper/accepted) A paper on the concept of knowability (with Jan Heylen).
  • (paper/wip) A paper on imaginability.
  • (paper/wip) A paper on circularity concerns in the epistemology of modality.
  • (paper/wip) A paper on know-how and impossibility.
  • (paper/wip) A paper on understanding attributions.
  • (paper/wip) A paper presenting a formal model for understanding.

PhD Thesis: Agentive Modality and the Structure of Modal Knowledge

This thesis develops a theory about the structure of modal judgment and knowledge. Arguing in favor of pluralism about the source of modal knowledge, it focuses on the questions of the varieties of modal judgement and their relations, the function of modal judgement and the scope of modal knowledge. It offers a hypothesis about the development of the framework of modal knowledge, grounding it on the capacity to evaluate temporal judgements, from which the capacity to evaluate alternatives comes from. It suggests that the most basic framework of modal judgements consists in that of agentive modality, and in particular, about what one can do, and how. It is argued that the rest of the framework of modal judgement can be developed on this basis, although this imposes certain restrictions about the scope of modal knowledge. Additionally, the thesis provides analyses of various agentive modal notions, such as imaginability, what is a way to do something, and discusses how to understand counterfactuals with impossible antecedents.

Publications

(2020) "Game Counterpossibles", Argumenta, 6(1), 117-133. doi: 10.150pt75/2465-2334/202011.mor . [url]
Counterpossibles, counterfactuals conditional with impossible antecedents, are notoriously contested; while the standard view makes them trivially true, some authors argue that they can be non-trivially true. In this paper, I examine the use of counterfactuals in the context of games, and argue that there is a case to be made for their non-triviality in a restricted sense. In particular, I examine the case of retro problems in chess, where it can happen that one is tasked with evaluating counterfactuals about illegal positions. If we understand illegality as a type of restricted impossibility, those counterfactuals are non-trivial counterpossibles. I suggest that their non-triviality stems from their role in practices of rule coordination and revision, and suggest that this model could be generalized to counterpossibles in different domains. I then compare the approach to the accounts of Vetter 2016 and Locke 2019. .
(2020) "Epistemic Projects, Indispensability and the Structure of Modal Thought", Res Philosophica, 97(4), 611–638, doi: 10.11612/resphil.1946 . [url]
I argue that modal epistemology should pay more attention to questions about the structure and function of modal thought. We can treat these questions from synchronic and diachronic angles. From a synchronic perspective, I consider whether a general argument for the epistemic support of modal though can be made on the basis of modal thoughs’s indispensability for what Enoch and Schechter (2008) call rationally required epistemic projects. After formulating the argument, I defend it from various objections. I also examine the possibility of considering the indispensability of modal thought in terms of its components. Finally, I argue that we also need to approach these issues from a diachronic perspective, and I sketch how to approach this task. .
(2019) "Mistakes as Revealing and as Manifestations of Competence", Synthese, doi: 10.1007/s11229-019-02281-y . [url]
The final chapter of Elgin’s (True enough, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2017) defends the claim that some mistakes mark significant epistemic achievements. Here, I extend Elgin’s analysis of the informativeness of mistakes for epistemic policing. I also examine the type of theory of competence that Elgin’s view requires, and suggest some directions in which this can be taken. .