Methodological Advantages

This chapter makes the case that modal normativism also brings significant methodological advantages. First, it can provide a much-needed justification of using intuitions, thought experiments, and a form of conceptual analysis, in answering metaphysical modal questions. Second, it provides a straightforward methodology for answering such questions—considered as “internal” questions—and gives reasons for thinking that some such questions are simply unanswerable. But such questions may also be addressed as external questions, where we are concerned not with what rules our terms do follow, but what rules they should follow, and what linguistic and conceptual schemes we should use. This gives us the means for understanding some debates about metaphysical modality as engaged in metalinguistic negotiation and conceptual engineering—and thereby preserving the idea that such debates may be deep and important.