§ 6 Modal Competence

Modal competence is the ability to see that some things come about necessarily, whilst others come about contingently, or accidentally due to a set of (often contiguous) conditions or circumstances at work in a situation.

For example, the universe is, by definition, everything there is, but this everything there is has an obligation to itself; a Spinozist will demand of that universe that everything in it must, in principle, be able to affect or be affected by everything else in that universe in some way.

If something cannot, in principle, be affected by something else, it must belong to some other universe that can have nothing to do with ours in any way whatsoever.

That is a necessary Spinozist precondition for belonging to the universe and one that I find convincing.

However, things act on one another locally through what we call contiguity. So, it is the contingency of two things being in the same locality and bumping into each other that makes one affect the other, and vice versa.

It is this that allows logical space to form, the space in which everything that is either necessary or possible can be talked about and speculated upon conceptually and inferentially. (see the section on space)

Modal competence allows me to say things like: ‘Pigs fly? Impossible!’ and for you to then see that as a challenge to prove me wrong. The earthbound nature of pigs is not an a priori necessity; it is contingent upon their not being in an aeroplane and not having evolved to boast wings.

Modal competence, then, is a creative, explorative ability with which we explore possibilities based upon our causal competence, our intuitions, pure chance, serendipity, divine inspiration (if that’s your thing) or indeed causal conjecture.

We then critically consider whether discovered possibilities might also work well with reference to a particular goal we might have.

Could it be somehow useful to me, or to someone willing to pay me, to have pigs fly? This has to be analytically assessed with reference to whether it will work, and critically assessed with reference to whether it would be a good thing, taking the relevant factors and stakeholders into account.

I would like to propose that this is how design and indeed all intentional action (which is what design is) works.¹

As I said earlier—and enjoy repeating—with analysis we become knowing creatures, in possession of truths and accuracies, with critique we hope to become clever, successful but preferably good and wise creatures, that is we hope to be able to apply good means to good ends whose value we believe we know well.² Surely that is, or ought to be, the goal of every designer.

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1. G.E.M Anscombe, Intention, (Harvard University Press, 2000, originally published in 1957) where she argues that intention is to do something with reason. Since the publication much has been said about the subject, but the thesis holds and, within the pragmaticist tradition it has been worked on by Wilfred Sellars and Robert Brandom, whose thinking pervades this essay. ↩︎
2. The best definition of wisdom I have been able to discover comes from Phillipa Foot, Virtues and Vices, and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy, (Oxford 1978). ↩︎