Handling De Re and A Posteriori Modal Claims

This chapter aims to show how the modal normativist approach may accommodate the Kripkean idea that there are certain de re necessities (apparently attributing modal properties to individuals) and necessary truths that can only be known a posteriori. It begins by arguing, contrary to Putnam and others who defend purely causal theories of reference, that we do have reason to think that names and natural kind terms are governed by certain semantic rules, even if these rules are conditionalized and revisable. It goes on to show how the rules we need to accept in any case enable us to see even de re and a posteriori necessities as object-language reflections of semantic rules and their consequences. Modal normativists can thus account for de re and a posteriori necessities as long as they allow that the semantic rules may be conditionalized, schematic, and world-deferential.