“For example, the modal non-rationalist (or, following Ayn Rand's naming conventions, irrationalist) thinks that there’s no deeper account of why zombies, ghosts, or inverted qualia scenarios are impossible.”
This is not, in fact, what all those who deny a freewheeling modal rationalism think. Many don’t.
O’Connail gives a pretty standard argument here for why the conceivability of zombies doesn’t show that they’re possible. ( https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-021-01665-6 ). Why does his argument commit him to the view you ascribe to all mitigated modal skeptics?
I'll read the paper, but I'm dubious. What could the explanation lie in? It couldn't be something we can know a priori, nor could it be something we discover empirically. So what could it be?
The explanation could lie in something knowable a priori, but just not by us. (God might know modal truths that are beyond our ken, and might know it in a different way than the way he knows empirical truths. But human modal knowledge, the cool kids claim, is way, way more limited than that of an omniscient being. So even if the modal facts are knowable a priori, they just aren’t knowable in this way by us, at least if conceivability is the only tool in play.
Speaking of God, God is a nice toy example to motivate the mitigated modal skeptic’s position: the failure of the ontological argument, as well as the failure of the reverse ontological argument, shows us that there is at least one modal fact which - even if it could be known a priori by a more epistemically advanced being - can’t be known a priori. In the God case, conceivability is a dud. The mitigated modal skeptic’s (hella attractive) explanation of this is that God is far removed from day to day experience, and our modal knowledge doesn’t extend that far beyond the relatively humdrum.)
I agree the knowable a priori but not by us theory is possible--but then that's still an example of something being knowable a priori. On the topic of god, I don't think god is ideally conceivable, because god entails existing in all possible worlds, but we can conceive of a god that doesn't exist in all possible worlds. God is just as inconceivable as a necessary goat.
“For example, the modal non-rationalist (or, following Ayn Rand's naming conventions, irrationalist) thinks that there’s no deeper account of why zombies, ghosts, or inverted qualia scenarios are impossible.”
This is not, in fact, what all those who deny a freewheeling modal rationalism think. Many don’t.
O’Connail gives a pretty standard argument here for why the conceivability of zombies doesn’t show that they’re possible. ( https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-021-01665-6 ). Why does his argument commit him to the view you ascribe to all mitigated modal skeptics?
I'll read the paper, but I'm dubious. What could the explanation lie in? It couldn't be something we can know a priori, nor could it be something we discover empirically. So what could it be?
The explanation could lie in something knowable a priori, but just not by us. (God might know modal truths that are beyond our ken, and might know it in a different way than the way he knows empirical truths. But human modal knowledge, the cool kids claim, is way, way more limited than that of an omniscient being. So even if the modal facts are knowable a priori, they just aren’t knowable in this way by us, at least if conceivability is the only tool in play.
Speaking of God, God is a nice toy example to motivate the mitigated modal skeptic’s position: the failure of the ontological argument, as well as the failure of the reverse ontological argument, shows us that there is at least one modal fact which - even if it could be known a priori by a more epistemically advanced being - can’t be known a priori. In the God case, conceivability is a dud. The mitigated modal skeptic’s (hella attractive) explanation of this is that God is far removed from day to day experience, and our modal knowledge doesn’t extend that far beyond the relatively humdrum.)
I agree the knowable a priori but not by us theory is possible--but then that's still an example of something being knowable a priori. On the topic of god, I don't think god is ideally conceivable, because god entails existing in all possible worlds, but we can conceive of a god that doesn't exist in all possible worlds. God is just as inconceivable as a necessary goat.