Towards a non-uniform epistemology of modality

The proposed project is on modal epistemology. Modality is the area in philosophy that studies the nature of things and, relatedly, the notions of necessity, possibility and essence. Epistemology is the science of knowledge. Modal epistemology is, therefore, a philosophical sub-discipline which aims to answer questions about the source of our modal knowledge. How do we know, for instance, that the table I'm writing on could break? Or that I could have a car accident? How do we know that (or whether) humans are essentially humans? Could perhaps Socrates exist being a dog?
These questions are challenging. For I can see that the table is brown and rectangular, I can feel, through touch, that is rather cold. But I do not see or feel-I do not perceive-its possibility of breaking. On what grounds-epistemic grounds-then, do I say that it can break? Similarly, suppose I perceptually know that my neighbour, my father, and my favourite singer, all had car accidents. But if I myself have never had one, on what epistemic grounds do I say that I can have one? And to give another example: We know that Socrates is human (and perhaps also that he has always been and will always be). But what sort of evidence could we have for the stronger claim that he is essentially human?
The dominant view in the literature has been-and continues to being-that perception does not constitute our access to modal facts and, as a result, empiricism has not been very popular among modal epistemologists. Instead, rationalism, implemented in various ways, has been in the lead. For instance, the conceivabilists defend that our access to the modal realm is through (mental) acts of conceiving. They think, to put it crudely, that the fact that we can conceive of the table as broken is what grounds our judgement (and knowledge) that the table can break; and that the fact that we can't conceive of Socrates as being a dog (or a cat, or a giraffe...) ultimately grounds our judgement that he is essentially human.
An advantage of the rationalists is that, because their elucidations of modal knowledge do not involve empirical elements, they can hope for a uniform modal epistemology: that is, they can hope that modal knowledge about concrete entities can be elucidated in the same way as modal knowledge about abstract entities. This being so, our knowledge, for instance, that number two is essentially a number would also be elucidated, according to a conceivabilist, in terms of the fact that we can't conceive of it being any other kind of entity.
In the past several years, the current applicant has argued against the rationalist views one finds in the literature. The results of that research suggest that, after all, a uniform modal epistemology might not be available and that, for the case of concrete entities, empiricism deserves proper attention/exploration.
This project is to do, roughly, two things: first, to sketch an empiricist modal epistemology for the case of concrete entities and, second, to explore the shape a modal epistemology for abstract entities might need to have such that it's not susceptible to the same objections other rationalist accounts are believed to be susceptible to. As for the former, the applicant is working with the conviction that our knowledge that this table can break is grounded in (knowledge of) the fact that we've seen other (similar) tables broken. The task is to defend that and why this latter piece of knowledge, in combination with ampliative methodology, can constitute appropriate epistemic foundations for modal knowledge. The story to be developed here, however, won't transfer to abstract entities, and this makes the second part of the project an urgent task. A satisfactory modal epistemology for abstract entities will need to be very different in nature and the current project is to defend that, under a certain conception of abstract entities, such epistemology will need to be subsumed under an epistemology of existence.

The proposed project falls within the so-called 'theoretical philosophy'. Its suggested research is highly specialised and it will be, I believe, largely inaccessible to an untrained audience. As such, it is difficult to conceive of clear, specific ways in which the current project, or its outputs, could impact the non-academic sphere. Having said this, however, the project is on modal epistemology and it is not difficult to realize ways modal epistemology, as a whole, can impact the non-academic world.
A lot of our decision-making processes, for instance, rest on modal premises. We decide to use the safety-belt when driving because we're aware we *can* have a car accident and we know that the use of the safety-belt helps diminishing the human damages of accidents. Or, to give a larger-scale example, governments opt for certain environmental policies because they believe that the climate change tendency *can* be, if not reverted, at least decelerated. Having such modal premises raised to the epistemic status of knowledge (as opposed to the weaker status of belief) will matter when it comes to claiming the rationality of our decisions, and modal epistemology is helping us understand the mechanisms (and methodology) by means of which we attain knowledge of modal truths. In a similar vein, knowledge representation in AI (artificial intelligence) will benefit from the findings of modal epistemology and modal logic as pieces of reasoning that rest on modal premises are ubiquitous.
While it is true that such impact does not depend specifically on the current project--or, for that matter, on any one particular project on the topic--, it is also true that this does not mean (and it would be fallacious to infer) that the current project has no role to play in such impact. But because of the (I would say) holistic nature of the impact that modal epistemology has, it is very difficult to quantify or measure the impact that this particular project will have.
Despite this, there are steps that can be taken to try to maximize the direct impact that the suggested project can have; mostly through dissemination to non-academic audiences. This is not always possible, as the degree of simplification that would sometimes be needed in theoretical philosophy in order to make a project intelligible to a non-specialised audience would be so high that the distinctive traits of the project would be lost in the simplification. To some extent, the second part of the research project--the one devoted to the epistemology of modality for abstract entities--falls under this rubric. But not, I believe, the first part--that of developing an epistemology of modality for concrete entities. It is not too difficult to offer a simplified version of the central problems in modal epistemology and of the empiricist line of solution I want to defend for the case of concrete entities without compromising the spirit of the proposal, thereby making the research and its outputs to some extent accessible to the non-academic public. The current applicant has already taken steps in this direction in the past and, as the Pathways to Impact file explains, she is planning analogous steps as far as the current project is concerned.