鄧敦民 Duen-Min Deng

探究最深的實在結構 思索最深的哲學困惑

My research is mainly focused on analytic metaphysics and philosophical logic, including the following. First, I work on issues about essence and modality, where I defend a naturalistic approach. Based on such an approach, I criticize some of the dominant accounts in modal epistemology, including the famous assimilation of knowledge of metaphysical modality to knowledge of counterfactuals.

Secondly, I work on formal semantics of counterfactual conditionals. I propose an explanation-based approach to counterfactuals, where I argue that explanatory relations such as causation and grounding are crucial to our counterfactual reasoning. In a joint work, I also provide some technical improvements to the causal modeling treatment of conditionals, showing how causal models can help us better understand the relationship between indicative conditionals and counterfactual conditionals.

Thirdly, I also work on issues in meta-metaphysics, especially on the recent ‘post-modal’ revolution about tools of metaphysics. Among these alleged post-modal tools, the most useful one should be the notion of grounding. I invoke it in my formal semantics of counterfactual conditionals, and also in an attempt to construct a new cosmological argument showing that there exists a unique ultimate ground of everything. So, I agree that the notion of grounding can be very fruitful for metaphysical theorizing. But I also criticize some accounts of grounding which seem to me to be utterly mysterious.