Are Modal Facts Brute Facts?

Modality appears to be all around us: water molecules are necessarily H2O; it’s necessary that if something is a cat, then it’s a mammal; it’s possible for you to wear brown shoes. The implausibility of eliminativism about modality combined with the lack of an ontologically conservative, genuinely reductive account of modality lends a prima facie plausibility to modal primitivism. Despite this prima facie plausibility, the author contends that modal primitivism is ultimately untenable. She argues that there is a plausible form of modal reductionism which has, thus far, been overlooked in the literature, namely, an account which proceeds via providing a reductive account of the existence of objects which have modal properties rather than via providing a reductive account of objects’ instantiation of modal properties. In light of the availability of this new way of reducing modality, modal reductionism is preferable to modal primitivism. Modal facts are not brute.