Epistemic Two-Dimensionalism and the Ontological Modal Space

Abstract

This work presents the main lines of epistemic two-dimensionalism recently defended by David Chalmers, discussing, in particular, the motivations that semantics is supposed to serve in the connection between metaphysical modality and epistemic modality. After presenting the two-dimensional epistemic semantics, three difficulties are leveled against it: (i) it is insufficiently distinguished from the traditional contextual bi-dimensional semantics; (ii) the notion of a priori justification on which it is constructed is badly requiring more precision; and (iii) the defenders of the semantics have completely despised the cases of “strong contingencies”.