Christopher Peacocke’s (1999) Integration Challenge asks us to reconcile, for any given domain, a plausible account of what is involved in the truth of statements in that domain with a credible account of how we come to know them. I develop a new formulation on which the task is to explain how epistemic access to facts in a given domain is possible, given a metaphysical account of their nature. This formulation has two advantages. First, it replaces the metaphorical notion of “integration” with the more tractable demand to explain the relation between a domain’s subject matter and our access to it. Second, by setting aside the notion of truth, it prevents theorists from sidestepping the challenge by denying that statements in the domain have truthmakers.
The Integration Challenge is often taken to be particularly pressing for realist theories, on which the facts in a domain are mind-independent, objective, and (in some cases) causally inert. Anti-realist theories are supposed to ease the difficulty by denying mind-independence, thereby making epistemic access less mysterious. In the case of modality, Amie Thomasson’s (2021) Modal Normativism promises just that. I argue, however, that her account does not yet provide a sufficient explanation. Specifically, Modal Normativism merely relocates the Integration Challenge to a different domain, in a way structurally analogous to a familiar objection against realist accounts.
