An Update on Epistemic Modals

Willer, Malte

doi:10.1007/s10992-015-9364-8

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…In particular, if we want to capture might-sentences involvement in modal subordination, their update effect should not just be that of testing the information state for whether it is compatible with their prejacent. In addition, we should model their effect as that of adding a new possibility updated with their prejacent (Willer 2013(Willer , 2015. For example, in (46a), the first might-sentence should also introduce the possibility that the wolf comes in, so that the second sentence can be interpreted relative to that possibility.…”

Section: Modal Subordinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dynamics of Argumentative Discourse

Kocurek

Pavese

2021

J Philos Logic

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Arguments have always played a central role within logic and philosophy. But little attention has been paid to arguments as a distinctive kind of discourse, with its own semantics and pragmatics. The goal of this essay is to study the mechanisms by means of which we make arguments in discourse, starting from the semantics of argument connectives such as 'therefore'. While some proposals have been made in the literature, they fail to account for the distinctive anaphoric behavior of 'therefore', as well as for uses of argument connectives in complex arguments, suppositional arguments, arguments with non-declarative conclusions, as well as arguments with parenthetical remarks. We argue that a comprehensive account of arguments requires imposing a distinctive tree-like structure on contexts. We show how to extend our account to accommodate modal subordination and different flavors of argument connectives.

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Section: Modal Subordinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dynamics of Argumentative Discourse

Kocurek

Pavese

2021

J Philos Logic

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“…In update semantics, two conjunctions can be defined. One is static (as in [14]), the other dynamic (as in [16,17]). To differentiate them, we consider the following language.…”

Section: Update Consequencementioning

confidence: 99%

Modal Logic via Global Consequence

Xu¹

2019

Preprint

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In modal logic, semantic consequence is usually defined locally by truth preservation at all worlds in all models (with respect to a class of frames). It can also be defined globally by truth preservation in all models (with respect to a class of frames). The latter is called global consequence, which is much less studied than the standard local one. In this paper we first study the relationship between local and global consequence. Then we give some correspondence results for global consequence. Finally, we illustrate two applications of global consequence, connecting it with informational consequence and update consequence proposed in formal semantics. Some results in the paper are already known, which are collected in the paper for the sake of completeness. The others appear to be new. We suggest that global consequence is not only interesting theoretically, but also useful for application.

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“…Perhaps most notably, the test semantics predicts the infelicity of embedded epistemic contradictions. See von Fintel andGillies (2007),Willer (2013), andWiller (2015) for details. SeeYalcin (2007) for a thorough characterization of the problem of epistemic contradiction.…”

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confidence: 99%

Dynamic ‘might’ and correct belief

Skeels

2023

Inquiry

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Synopsis: Veltman's test semantics and developments thereof reject the canon about semantic contents and attitude ascriptions in favor of dynamic alternatives. 1 According to these theories the semantic content of a sentence is not a proposition, but a context change potential (CCP). Similarly, beliefs are not taken to be relations between agents and propositions, but agents and CCPs. These deviations from the canon come at the cost of an elegant explanation about the correctness of belief. Standardly, it is taken that the content of a belief is correct just in case the content of that belief is true. The proponent of the test semantics cannot appeal to this explanation since they hold that certain contents, namely epistemically modalized contents, do not express propositions, and are neither true nor false. Willer (2013) concerns how the test semantics can be marshalled to solve inter alia puzzles of modal disagreement. Crucial to Willer's account is the proposal of a correctness condition which I call evidential correctness. According to evidential correctness, the content of a belief is correct just in case someone with the believing agent's evidence would not be committed to factual error. The present paper argues that evidential correctness does not yield the proper correctness judgments for interlocutors in several common instances of modal disagreement. It further argues that evidential correctness concerns a different kind of correctness than the kind operative in modal disagreements. Since correctness judgments are what motivate the claim that modal disagreements are genuine disagreements, I take these objections to be significant. I subsequently consider two potential alternatives: weak correctness and strong correctness but conclude that each suffers from substantial problems. I then provide my own novel correctness conditions for belief contents within a dynamic framework. I argue that there are, in fact, two conditions for correctness of content that ought to be considered when operating within the test semantics. The first, locative correctness, applies only to contents which locate the believing agent in some subset of the space of possibility by entailing some contingent proposition. The second, informational correctness applies to contents that do not not locate the believing agent. Such content includes, most notably, epistemically modalized content. After motivating this distinction, I * Forthcoming in Inquiry: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.1 The test semantics is introduced in Veltman (1996). See Groenendijk and Stokhof (1991a), Stokhof (1991b), andvan der Does et al. (1997) among many, many others for further developments.1 demonstrate how it yields the requisite correctness judgments on the part of disagreeing agents, and avoids the problems of the previously considered views.14 Must φ = def ¬Might ¬φ. On such an interpretation, Must is strong. While there are reasons to reject the strength of English "must" (see Karttunen (1972)), many working in the test semantics take "must"...

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An Update on Epistemic Modals

Cited by 6 publications

References 59 publications

The Dynamics of Argumentative Discourse

The Dynamics of Argumentative Discourse

Modal Logic via Global Consequence

Dynamic ‘might’ and correct belief

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