No Modality Problem for Combinatorial Externalism

Marques ( Philosophia, 49 (3), 1109–1125 2021 ) argues that Hom’s Combinatorial Externalism (CE) faces a hitherto unknown problem when coupled with a standard Kratzerian account of deontic modality: CE plus Kratzerian modality would entail the negation of a thesis central to Hom’s analysis of slurs, the null extensionality thesis (i.e., the thesis that slurs have empty extensions). Since modality is an integral part of Hom’s take on slurs, and Kratzer’s account of modality has the status of the standard take on modality, this would be bad news for CE. In this paper, I argue that, pace Marques, CE and a Kratzerian account of deontic modals do not clash with the null extensionality claim. Marques’ discussion, however, helps us expose substantive, non-semantic assumptions concerning practical philosophy that seem to be implicitly built into CE’s semantic analysis of slurs.