A New Route To Reducing De Re Modality

Dana Goswick (University of Melbourne)

I present and defend a new route to reducing non-trivial de re modality.  In particular, rather than taking the existence of objects which have non-trivial de re modal properties as unproblematic and then attempting to provide a reductive account of their instantiation of modal properties, I provide a reductive account of the existence of objects which have modal properties.  I, then, show how providing a reductive account of the existence of objects which have non-trivial de re modal properties thereby provides a reductive account of non-trivial de re modality.