The Indispensability of Modals

Sam Baron (University of Sydney)

Abstract: Indispensability arguments seek to establish the truth of some body of claims based on the involvement of those claims in science. Standard indispensability arguments are aimed at establishing the truth of mathematical claims. I mount an indispensability argument for the truth of modal claims. The argument focuses on explanatory power: we should believe modal claims because they play an indispensable explanatory role in science. The indispensability argument for modals is targeted at modal fictionalists and modal agnostics. The former explicitly deny the truth of modal claims, while the latter maintain that we cannot know whether modal claims are true or not.