Daniel Dohrn
Senior Member
I am a researcher at the university of Milan. Before coming to Milan in 2019, I worked at the universities of Berlin, Mannheim, Aachen, Konstanz, and Munich. I am interested in questions of modality, combining issues from philosophy of language, modal epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, and history of philosophy from Descartes onwards. In particular, I have worked on imagination and counterfactual thinking in modal epistemology and on the epistemology of thought experiments. I am also interested in how time and modality interact. Among the topics I would like to address within the Centre for Philosophy of Time are the role of tense morphology in the semantics of conditionals and the role of the asymmetry between past and future in counterfactuals, probabilistic, and deliberational reasoning.
Recent Publications
Online first a. The Science of Counterpossibles vs. the Counterpossibles of Science. British Journal for the Philosophy of Sciencehttps://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/716769
Online first b. With Mezzadri A. Integrative design for thought-experiments. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X23002340
Online first c. Don’t imagine junk! Positive conceivability and modal illusion in mereology. Synthese 203, 207. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04658-0
Online first d. Modals model models: scientific modeling and counterfactual reasoning. Synthese 201, 161. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04135-0
2024a. Ab Esse ad Posse Non Valet Consequentia. Journal of Philosophical Logic 53, 391–409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-023-09735-2
2024b. The Feasibility Approach to Imagination as a Guide to Metaphysical Modality. Argumenta 10, 127-144. 10.14275/2465-2334/20240.doh
2024c. Hume and The Project of Naturalizing Modality. Balkan Journal of Philosophy 16, 109-116.
https://www.pdcnet.org/bjp/content/bjp_2024_0016_0002_0109_0116
2021a. Are Counterpossibles Epistemic?. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 102, 51–72 DOI: 10.1111/papq.12332
2021b. A Humean Modal Epistemology. Synthese 199, 1701–1725. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02842-6
2021c. The Non-Maximality Solution to Counterfactual Scepticism. Synthese 199, 1499-1520 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02808-8
2020a. Counterfactuals and Non-Exceptionalism about Modal Knowledge. Erkenntnis 85, 1461-1483. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-018-0086-5
2020b. Counterfactuals vs. Conceivability as a Guide to Modal Knowledge. Philosophical Studies 177, 3637-3659. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01386-x
2020c. Simulation and the Predictive Brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43, 26–27.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19003054
2019a: Modal Epistemology Made Concrete. Philosophical Studies 176, 2455-2475 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1135-2
2019b. Should Special Science Laws Be Written into the Semantics of Counterfactuals?, Kairos 22, 86-108. https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/kjps-2019-0010
2018a. Thought Experiments without Possible Worlds, Philosophical Studies 175, 363-384.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0871-z
2018b. Moral Sentimentalism in Counterfactual Contexts: Moral Properties are Response-Enabled, Philosophia 46, 69-82, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9913-1
2018c. La fantaisie, est-elle le privilege des seuls poètes? –Moritz Schlick on a ‘Sinnkriterium’ for Thought Experiments, Croatian Journal of Philosophy 18, 87-101
2017a. Nobody Bodily Knows Possibility, The Journal of Philosophy 114, 678-686.
2017b. Is There an Incremental Reading of Conditionals? Australasian Philosophical Review 1:2, 173-178.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24740500.2017.1346412?scroll=top&needAccess=true
2016. Fiction and Thought Experiment. A Case Study, Teorema 35, 185-199.
2015a. Egan and Agents. How Evidential Decision Theory Could Deal with Egan’s Dilemma, Synthese 192, 1883-1908.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0661-0
2012a. Diller über Emotionen: Oder über zwei grundsätzlich verschiedene Begriffe von ‘Begriff’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 54, 85-90 [Diller on Emotions. Or about Two Fundamentally Different Concepts of Concept]
2011a. Are there a Posteriori Conceptual Necessities?, Philosophical Studies 155, 181-197.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9568-2
2010. Hume on Knowledge of Metaphysical Modalities, Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 13, 38-59
2009a. Counterfactual Narrative Explanation, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67, 37-47
