Deontic Modals and Probabilities: One Theory to Rule Them All?

Abstract

This paper motivates and develops a novel semantic framework for deontic modals. The framework is designed to shed light on two things: the relationship between deontic modals and substantive theories of practical rationality and the interaction of deontic modals with conditionals, epistemic modals and probability operators. I argue that, in order to model inferential connections between deontic modals and probability operators, we need more structure than is provided by classical intensional theories. In particular, we need probabilistic structure that interacts directly with the compositional semantics of deontic modals. However, I reject theories that provide this probabilistic structure by claiming that the semantics of deontic modals is linked to the Bayesian notion of expectation. I offer a probabilistic premise semantics that explains all the data that create trouble for the rival theories. keywords: deontic modality, probability, information sensitivity, premise semantics, deontic conditionals. word count: 11450 words excluding footnotes; approximately 13300 including footnotes. [Penultimate version of January 2015]