ABSTRACT
Anti-realist modal primitivism is anti-realist conceptualist in that modality is regarded as having purely mind-dependent status: it is not to be identified with conceptualist reductionism, which holds the further thesis that modal notions reduce to non-modal notions. Modal projectivism thus renders iterated modalities unintelligible and is incompatible with their featuring in modal logic. This chapter establishes the credentials of realism about objective non-logical modalities both as a means of undermining anti-metaphysics and to establish that the requirement for substantive metaphysical possibility cannot be usurped by attempting to use logical possibility as a surrogate. The conceptualism to be contested is the full-blooded variety which contends that all modality has purely intensional or purely intentional status. Sidelle's account assumes that anti-conceptualist realism and anti-realist conceptualism are the only options in the philosophy of essence, individuation and modality de re.
