This first cluster gathers attempts to ground, deflate, or bypass the argument's modal and structural claims: accounts that would explain modal talk away, that would relocate Time, Space, and Substance to a simulated or solipsistic substrate, or that would derive them from something more fundamental still, sufficient reason, Humean succession, or information. These positions differ, but they share one aim: to account for change and its structural conditions without appeal to the structure the argument derives. One entry shares no such aim: Pizzi's impossibility of nothingness ([§4.1.11](<4.1.11 Pizzi's Impossibility of Nothingness.md>)), the literature's nearest convergence — the same closure of modal space against ∅, reached by kindred machinery and stopping short of naming the necessary content. Three further entries close the cluster on the modal side proper. Dispositionalism about modality ([§4.1.12](<4.1.12 Dispositionalism about Modality.md>)) grounds possibility in the potentialities of actual objects rather than in a plurality of worlds, and is the account nearest to this one. Modal epistemology ([§4.1.13](<4.1.13 Modal Epistemology and the Remoteness Objection.md>)) grants the vocabulary and ordinary modal knowledge alike, and challenges the reliability of the modal faculty at the distances this argument works at. Impossible worlds and relative modality ([§4.1.14](<4.1.14 Impossible Worlds and Relative Modality.md>)) ask whether the quantifier in □(T∧S∧Φ) ranges over everything, or over a domain that could be widened by admitting impossible worlds or narrowed by a contextual modal base.

The question is whether any of them can describe a reality in which Time, Space, and Substance are absent. The reply is that none can. A simulation still needs a host that really changes; a solipsistic mind still runs on succession and distinction; a deflationary theory still needs the structure it redescribes. The challenge bears most directly on §[§2.1](<2.1 The S5 Pipeline.md>)–2.6 and the Modal Identity of [§2.6.6](<2.6.6 Modal Identity.md>): change-possibility and the joint obtaining of T, S, and Φ are one fact stated from two sides.

A preliminary note before the named engagements. The objection that everything we take to be reality might be a simulation (that what we take to be physical succession, extension, and persistence could be virtual artifacts of a deeper computational substrate) does not escape structure. It relocates it. Any host system capable of hosting simulated succession must itself instantiate genuine succession; any host system capable of hosting simulated extension must itself instantiate relational extension: distinct positions standing in a traversable interval (the thin, structural S of [§2.4.7](<2.4.7 Distinction Requires Spatiality.md>)), not necessarily a metric manifold of any particular geometry; any host system capable of hosting simulated persistence must itself persist. What the relocation secures is the structural role at each level (succession, traversable distinctness, persistence), not the contingent metric character (a particular spacetime or geometry), which is physical content established downstream ([§7.3](<7.3 Space.md>)).

The same diagnosis applies to hard solipsism: a solipsistic mind whose experience exhibits succession, distinction, and exchange is itself a configuration within T, S, and Φ. The question of whether anything else exists does not affect the necessity of T, S, and Φ. Both retreats relocate structure; they do not remove it.

A second preliminary note concerns alethic and doxastic modality. The engagements throughout this chapter operate in alethic modality, what holds across possible worlds independently of what any mind conceives or believes. Oppy -(Oppy, Graham, 1995); -(Oppy, Graham, 2006); -(Oppy, Graham, 2013) argues that conceivability-to-possibility inferences are unreliable because conceivability tracks cognitive limitations rather than modal facts, and expresses agnosticism about whether broadly logical and metaphysical modality are genuinely distinct. Both points are well-taken against arguments that derive alethic modal claims from doxastic premises. The argument of this book does not make that move. Its modal claims are grounded in actuality: change, reading, and conceiving are actually occurring, and the actuality-to-possibility inference, every actual fact is possible ([§1.2](<1.2 Modal Status.md>), the Actuality definition), is logically valid. Alethic modality is prior to doxastic modality because doxastic states presuppose it: a belief that P is a belief that P is true, truth conditions are alethic, and the very existence of a cognizer capable of doxastic states is itself an alethic fact. Oppy's agnosticism about the broadly logical/metaphysical distinction is not dissolved merely by the Condition-Individuation Criterion ([§2.6.11](<2.6.11 No Fourth Condition.md>)). As [§2.10](<2.10 Three Logical Strata.md>) now states, distinguishing the temporal, spatial, and physical subject matters does not by itself derive three separate consequence relations. The book proposes three formally differentiated disciplines or readings, but whether broadly logical and metaphysical modality are distinct remains a substantive semantic question rather than something the criterion settles by itself.


- [4.1.1 Rigid Designation](<4.1.1 Rigid Designation.md>)
- [4.1.2 Two-Dimensional Semantics](<4.1.2 Two-Dimensional Semantics.md>)
- [4.1.3 Principle of Sufficient Reason](<4.1.3 Principle of Sufficient Reason.md>)
- [4.1.4 Humean Contingency](<4.1.4 Humean Contingency.md>)
- [4.1.5 Information-Theoretic Foundationalism](<4.1.5 Information-Theoretic Foundationalism.md>)
- [4.1.6 Quinean Modal Skepticism](<4.1.6 Quinean Modal Skepticism.md>)
- [4.1.7 Modal Conventionalism](<4.1.7 Modal Conventionalism.md>)
- [4.1.8 Metaontological Deflationism](<4.1.8 Metaontological Deflationism.md>)
- [4.1.9 Wittgensteinian Quietism](<4.1.9 Wittgensteinian Quietism.md>)
- [4.1.10 The Source of Possibility](<4.1.10 The Source of Possibility.md>)
- [4.1.11 Pizzi's Impossibility of Nothingness](<4.1.11 Pizzi's Impossibility of Nothingness.md>)
- [4.1.12 Dispositionalism about Modality](<4.1.12 Dispositionalism about Modality.md>)
- [4.1.13 Modal Epistemology and the Remoteness Objection](<4.1.13 Modal Epistemology and the Remoteness Objection.md>)
- [4.1.14 Impossible Worlds and Relative Modality](<4.1.14 Impossible Worlds and Relative Modality.md>)


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← [4. Metaphysical Rivals](<4. Metaphysical Rivals.md>) | [4.1.1 Rigid Designation](<4.1.1 Rigid Designation.md>) →
