This paper might change your mind

Abstract

Linguistic intervention in rational decision-making is captured in terms of information change. Cases that look like changes in value functions are actually changes in information. This gives us no way to model interventions involving expressions that only have an attentional effect on conversational contexts. How do expressions with non-informational content-like epistemic modals-intervene in rational decision making? We show how to model rational decision change without information change: replace a standard conception of value (on which the value of a set of worlds reduces to values of individual worlds in the set) with one on which the value of a set of worlds is determined by a selection function that picks out a generic member world. We discuss some upshots of this view for theorizing in philosophy and formal semantics. * This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the article; it has not been formatted or copy-edited.