Modal Statements Research Articles

Structure, ingredient sense and assertoric strategy

In this article, we will revisit a motivation to consider the advantages of a theory about structured contents over a semantics of possible worlds. We will argue that a structure represents the strategic organization of the content of “p” under conditions in which asserting it does not imply contradictory consequences. These are the winning conditions for the assertion of ‘p’. When ‘p’ is modally sensitive – it can change its winning parameters – knowledge of the structure thus represents the rational point for assertions (about non-actualized realities) that are organized to maximize what can be deduced from ‘p’. In these cases, the known relevant structure is intensional. We will argue that actualist Possible World Semantics, seeking the conversion of intensional knowledge into a de re representation of possible states, pays the price of being blind to structural divergences; it can only poorly explain these structural divergences between non-actual states of information and correlate it with divergence between winning strategies of assertion. Our argument will begin exposing Frege’s legacy; resort to Dummett’s concept of ingredient sense as an alternative to Kripke’s grade two knowledge; and briefly go through a semantic strategy of Stalnaker and Thomason to represent modal statements. In addition to these authors, we will explore the contribution of Russell, Kaplan and Ecthemendy to our argument.

Sellars on modality: possible worlds and rules of inference

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the account of alethic modality as presented by Wilfrid Sellars in his earlier work from 1947 to 1958. Its aim is twofold. First, I discuss Sellars' analysis by exploring its historical relationship to Carnap's account of modality. I argue that Carnap's early syntactic treatment of modality profoundly influenced Sellars' own so-called ‘regulist' account of modality in terms of rules of inference. Furthermore, it is suggested that Sellars' lesser-known possible worlds analysis was influenced by Carnap's later semantic account of modality. The second aim of the paper is a critical one. I raise a number of objections to Sellars’ account of modality and argue that his account confronts some serious limitations. I also argue that Sellars does not provide a satisfying explanation of the relationship between his regulist account and his possible worlds analysis. I offer such an explanation by arguing that his regulist account should be understood as a pragmatic account of what is conveyed by the use of modal sentences, whereas his possible worlds analysis is a semantic account of the asserted content of modal statements. That is, the regulist account and the possible worlds analysis have different explanatory targets.

Can you See? Actuality Entailments in the Present

Abstract This paper argues that English present ability modal statements like “I can see Saturn” are ambiguous in the same way as past ability statements like “I was able to lift a fridge”: they can express either a general ability (‘I have the ability to see Saturn, in general’), or have an actualized (episodic) interpretation (‘I'm seeing Saturn, right now’). The challenge is to explain why in the present, actualized interpretations are only licensed when the modal's prejacent is a perception verb like see, and not with other predicates: “I can watch Saturn” only has the general ability reading available, and not the actualized one. I propose that (i) similar to what has been shown for past modal statements in the literature on Actuality Entailments (AEs) (Bhatt 1999), the ambiguity depends on grammatical aspect: general ability readings are due to the imperfective, which “removes” AEs by having the event occur in worlds introduced by a generic operator (Bhatt 1999), and actualized readings are due to the perfective, which directly combines with the prejacent event across the modal (Hacquard 2009); (ii) The usual unavailability of actualized interpretations in the present comes from the Present Perfective Paradox (Malchukov 2009): perfective aspect is incompatible with present tense, because the event time, a time interval, cannot be contained within the punctual speech time. (iii) Perception verbs are special in that they, and only they, are able to combine with perfective in the present, either because the PPP does not arise at all, or because they allow a specific type of aspectual coercion. This also explains their behavior in (non-modal) simple present sentences. A second challenge is that actualized interpretations in the present appear to occur exclusively with ability modals, and not when modals express other root flavors (e.g. teleological or deontic). I propose that this restriction is due to a further temporal orientation constraint.

Necessity and linguistic rules

ABSTRACT Amie Thomasson has argued against descriptivism about modality, which starts from the idea that modal statements serve to track features of the world and that these features explain the truth-values of modal claims. Thomasson objects that descriptivists cannot satisfactorily explain how modal features fit into the naturalistic picture of the world and that they cannot account for our apparent capacity to acquire modal knowledge. On Thomasson’s alternative to descriptivism (called ‘normativism’), the function of modal claims is to facilitate communication about certain semantic rules. I argue that it is not obvious that the semantic rules that Thomasson takes to be expressed by modal truths really exist. Moreover, I defend a specific version of descriptivism – essentialism – against Thomasson’s objections. Essential truths play a central role in the best explanations of many facts about the world. That includes the explanations delivered by our best scientific theories once these theories are correctly interpreted philosophically. In this way, essences earn their keep in a naturalistic view of the world. Furthermore, the abductive methods by which we confirm our explanatory theories also support certain theses about essences. This allows essentialists to explain knowledge of essences and modal knowledge.

Приписывание пропозициональных установок de re как средство убеждения

By de re propositional attitude ascription for rhetorical purposes, we will understand ut­tering a modal statement wherein the speaker deliberately uses a description of the attitude’s object which she knows to be unavailable to the attitude holder. As the existence of rhetorical de re is revealed, it gives rise to two questions that will be the primary concern of the present paper. (1) Using a rhetorical de re ascription, does the speaker utter something false in the model-theoretic sense? (2) Would it be justified to classify rhetorical de re as a rhetorical ploy designed to, or naturally predisposed to, mislead the addressee? This paper argues that the first question can be answered positively but the second one should receive a negative answer. We show that the question of whether a certain instance of rhetorical de re is a ploy or act of manipulation should be answered depending not on whether the statement is clearly false for the speaker but on whether it is clearly unacceptable for the speaker. In case the speaker herself considers the argument made by means of the statement acceptable, there is no reason to de­nounce such a communicative act as a ploy or manipulation irrespective of which model-theoretic truth-value the statement has. There are therefore reasons to incorporate rhetorical considerations into the modelling of how attitude reports are interpreted, in addition to con­siderations of truth and epistemological aspects, championed by Frege.

Модальный структурализм и проблема интеграции

Modal structuralism attempts to solve the problems of Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics. First, the paper presents the view that modal structuralism emerges out of Benacerraf’s arguments against Pla-tonism and set-theoretic reductionist realism. Putnam’s account is showed to be another source of influ-ence on modal structuralism. Second, the basic ideas of modal structuralism are reviewed, with special at-tention paid to how the translation of mathematical statements into modal sentences helps to avoid the set-theoretic grounding of such statements. However, since possible worlds are conceived as set-theoretic entities, the translation itself faces the problem of potential circular explanation. To solve the problem, Hellman suggests taking modalities as primitives, but his solution faces additional issues. Two of them are an unclear metaphysical status of the possible structures mathematicians make statements about and an obscure epistemic access mathematicians have to these structures. In order to avoid these issues, the paper suggests combining modal structuralism with modal normativism. According to the latter, modal statements are not about objects or facts but about linguistic rules. Since modal normativists interpret the possible structures as non-metaphysical entities, the problem of epistemic access to such structures trans-forms into the problem of the agent’s knowledge of the semantic rules of mathematical language. It is al-so pointed out that modal normativism might solve another set of structuralist problems, not specifically concerned with modalities, e.g., the problem of objects’ dependence on the structures in which they are embedded.

C-KE/I: A pragmatic framework for policy innovation

• Policy design is neglected in the literature and conducted informally in practice. • Concept-knowledge (C-K) theory is a design theory rarely applied to policy design. • We introduce a framework (C-K E/I ) improving C-K for applications to policy design. • Its practical relevance is illustrated through an ex post analysis of a case study. Improving policy making is key to address numerous contemporary challenges such as the environmental crisis, climate change, global inequality, financial crises, or pandemics. Policy making is a sequence of stages structuring policy problems and choices made to address them. Among these stages, policy design is a crucial phase since it impacts the quality of the policy alternatives being considered. Policy design is, however, largely neglected in the scientific literature, and in practice it is mainly conducted informally. Design theory, and more specifically Concept-Knowledge (C-K) theory, originally aimed at assisting the process of creating marketable objects, offers promises to formalize and rationalize policy design. We critically analyze this theory, showing that, despite its strengths, as it stands it is ill-adapted to support the innovative design of policy alternatives. For that purpose, we propose a framework, C-K E/I . This framework, which is inspired by and compatible with C-K, appraises innovation based on the explicit or implicit modal statements held by a certain individual or group (“E/I” stands for Explicit vs. Implicit). Through an ex-post analysis of a case study—the search for innovative policy solutions to water management problems in the Apulia Region, Italy—we illustrate the practical applicability and usefulness of our framework.

The Role of Communicative Modal Categories in the Expression of Logical Value

This article examines the role of logical communicative modalities in evaluative and axiological processes. The logical process in modal statements and its connection with assertive statements.

Significat, comprensió i acció

Els criteris perque un estudiant entengui les paraules d’un idioma inclouen actuar de manera apropiada. En el cas de la logica modal d’Anscombe (p. ex. Haver de φ), aquestes accions inclouen el que s’especifica en la declaracio modal (p. ex. gerundi-gerundi). Ensenyar un idioma significa inculcar no nomes habilitats sino tambe inclinacions per fer certes coses. En el cas dels no estudiants, existeix una presumpcio predeterminada de competencia linguistica, i aixo explica que es pugui dir que un adult compren «Ha de» mentre que generalment no esta disposat a respondre adequadament, es a dir, fent φ-gerundi. (Deshonestedat.) Es possible que es consideri normal que els membres d’algun grup social no responguin adequadament a les declaracions modals. Aquesta situacio pot ser resultat d’una confusio conceptual i practica, amb el tipus de mala fe corresponent al·legada per Anscombe en relacio amb el «deure moral». Ates que la comprensio de les declaracions modals es manifesta en formes d’accio voluntaria, resulta incoherent la visio internalista que un nomes te raons per obeir una regla si fer-ho es propici per satisfer els desitjos.

The Influence of Emotions and Current Mood on Modal Statement: A Corpus Analysis of the Dialogue in Henry James’s Daisy Miller

Due to the fact that the conceptualization of reality and the ability of making judgments are greatly influenced by the speaker’s emotions and current mood, the main aim of this research is to emphasize the effect of emotions on modal statement. The methodology entails literature review which offers an insight into the aspects of modality followed by the corpus analysis of a dialogue between the two protagonists from Daisy Miller by Henry James. It is concluded that the modal strength of modal verbs depends on the intensity of emotion.

Persistence and modality

It seems plausible to say that what changes an entity can or cannot survive depends on its persistence conditions, and that these depend, in turn, on its sortal kind. It might seem to follow that an entity cannot belong to two sortal kinds with potentially conflicting persistence conditions. Notoriously, though, this conclusion is denied by ‘contingent identity’ theorists, who hold, for example, that a permanently coincident statue and piece of clay are identical, although the persistence conditions associated with the kinds statue and piece of clay are potentially conflicting. A clash with Leibniz’s Law is avoided by treating modal predicates as what Harold Noonan has called ‘Abelardian predicates’, as in the version of ‘inconstant’ counterpart theory developed by David Lewis. In addition to other difficulties, however, there is a question whether this ‘Abelardian’ theory does justice to the intuitions expressed in such statements as that the piece of clay could, while the statue could not, have survived a radical reshaping of its matter. I present an argument, which I call ‘the vacuous satisfaction argument’, for the conclusion that the theory does indeed fail to capture the significance of such de re modal statements.

The Expression of Modality in Tlingit: A Paucity of Grammatical Devices

This paper provides an in-depth description of the expression of modal categories in Tlingit (Na-Dene; Alaska). Epistemic, deontic, and circumstantial modal statements are examined, and for each I examine statements with strong and weak modal force. A notable feature of the Tlingit system is that—relative to other languages of the Pacific Northwest—Tlingit exhibits a striking paucity of grammaticalized modal expressions, and only a limited subset of the aforementioned modal categories can be expressed by the conventionalized, truth-conditional semantics of a statement. Nevertheless, speakers employ a variety of pragmatic strategies to communicate information about other modal categories. This situation is rather similar to that reported for Nez Perce, but different from cases such as St’át’imcets or Washo, in which modals exhibit a context-dependent meaning, allowing for a small set to denote all logically possible modal categories.

Remarks on Ontological Dependence in Set Theory

In a recent paper, John Wigglesworth explicates the notion of a set's being grounded in or ontologically depending on its members by the modal statement that in any world (possible or impossible), that a set exists in that world entails that its members exist as well. After suggesting that variable-domain S5 captures an appropriate account of metaphysical necessity, Wigglesworth purports to prove that in any set theory satisfying the axiom Extensionality this condition holds, that is, that sets ontologically depend on their members with respect to extraordinarily weak notions of set. This paper diagnoses a number of problems concerning Wigglesworth's formal argument. For one, we will show that Wigglesworth's argument is invalid as it requires an appeal to hidden, extralogical theses concerning rigid designation and the persistence of sets across possible worlds. Having demonstrated the indispensability of these principles to Wigglesworth's argument, we will then show that even granted the enthymematic premises, the argument only proves the ontological dependence of singletons on their members and does not extend to sets in general. Finally, we will consider strengthenings of Wigglesworth's reasoning and suggest that even the weakest generalization will bear undesirable consequences.

Preference‐Conditioned Necessities: Detachment and Practical Reasoning

AbstractThis article is about conditionalized modal statements whose antecedents concern a preferential attitude of an agent. The focus is on anankastic conditionals or, as they are known in the philosophical literature, hypothetical imperatives. We present a linguistically‐motivated analysis of anankastic and related conditionals and use it to address challenges for semantic theories of natural language conditionals motivated by certain philosophical concerns about practical reasoning and the requirements of rationality.

The Adequacy of Genuine Modal Realism

What are the requirements on an adequate genuine modal realist analysis of modal discourse? One is material adequacy: the modal realist must provide for each candidate analysandum an analysans in the language of counterpart theory which by his lights has the same truth value as the candidate analysandum. Must the material biconditional joining these be necessarily true? This is the requirement of strict adequacy. It is not satisfied if Lewis�s 1968 scheme provides the analysis. John Divers puts forward a modification, which identifies cases of �advanced modalizing� in which the modal operator is semantically redundant. Even with this modification modal realist analyses of statements of modal discourse will be strictly inadequate. Strict adequacy can be achieved by extending the redundancy interpretation to all de dicto modal statements. The price is the denial of de dicto contingency. But perhaps material adequacy is enough. If the modal realist has a systematic means of replacing every sentence of quantified modal logic which he considers true by a sentence of counterpart theory that he considers true, perhaps he need do no more. Still, traditionally philosophical analysis aims at strict adequacy so it is as well to know that this is a test the modal realist analysis fails unless he abandons de dicto contingency.

The Acquisition of Epistemic Modality: From Semantic Meaning to Pragmatic Interpretation

Three experiments investigated the acquisition of English epistemic modal verbs (e.g., may, have to). Semantically, these verbs encode possibility or necessity with respect to available evidence. Pragmatically, the use of weak epistemic modals often gives rise to scalar conversational inferences (e.g., “The toy may be under the sofa” implies that it is not certain that the toy is under the sofa). Experiment 1 showed that children between the ages of 4 and 5 have mastered key aspects of epistemic modal semantics but have difficulties with contexts involving epistemic possibility. Experiment 2 showed that 4–5-year-olds prefer stronger/more informative over weaker modal statements in contrastive contexts if the stronger statements are warranted by the evidence. Experiment 3 further demonstrated that children of this age can draw pragmatic inferences from the use of weak epistemic modal verbs in contexts that do not involve overt pragmatic judgments. Taken together, these findings throw light on the acquisition of epistemic modality and have implications for the development of the semantics-pragmatics interface.

Using representations of practice to elicit mathematics teachers’ tacit knowledge of practice: a comparison of responses to animations and videos

This study compared conversations among groups of teachers of high school geometry that had been elicited by a representation of instruction (either a video or an animation) and facilitated with an open-ended agenda. All artifacts used represented instruction scenarios that departed from what, according to prior work, had been hypothesized as normative. We used as the dependent variable the proportion of modal statements about instructional practice made by a group, which we argue is a good quantitative indicator that the statement appeals to the group’s knowledge of the norms of practice. Animations and videos produced similar proportion of modal statements, but the types of modal statements differed—with animations being associated with more statements of probability and obligation and videos being associated with more statements of inclination. Overall, the results suggest that animations are just as useful as videos in eliciting these sorts of orientational meanings.

INTEGRATION OF MODAL AND FUZZY METHODS OF KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION IN ARTIFICIAL AGENTS

To enable artificial systems to meaningfully use a semantic language of communication is one of the long-term and key targets not only in the field of artificial cognitive agents, but also of AI research in general. Given existing solutions for grounding of modal statements of a language of communication and an idea to model internal concepts of the agent as zadehian fuzzy-linguistic concepts, this paper shows how to meaningfully combine the two within a single framework. An accomplished goal is a model for grounding of modal and non-modal statements of a language of communication based on concepts modelled internally as fuzzy sets spanned over the domain of observation. This paper describes a way in which fuzzy-linguistic concepts are activated by perceptual inputs and how an agents grounds respective non-modal statements. Further, an agent supposed to describe an unobserved part of the environment can use autoepistemic operators of possibility, belief, and knowledge to describe its cognitive attitude toward it. It is discussed how the modal extensions of statements with fuzzy-linguistic concepts should be grounded in order to preserve the common-sense. The resulting constraints put on the model of grounding are formally represented in a form of analytical restrictions put on the so-called relation of epistemic satisfaction.

In the Mental Fiction, Mental Fictionalism Is Fictitious

'I am not speaking' is a truth I cannot speak. Similarly, when T am not thinking' is true, I cannot think it without rendering it false. But consider a world where eliminativism obtains, where no one can strictly speak or think of anything at all. In that world, are there that I* (my counterpart) cannot speak or think? The answer may seem trivially yes, since I* cannot speak or think anything. But suppose, as is plausible, that truths are representational items, meaningful sentences or thoughts. Then the answer is no. For there would be no truths, hence no unspeakable or unthinkable truths. Though there would still be facts of which I* cannot speak or think.In particular, I* would be unable to speak or think of the very fact I* cannot speak or think. Suppose I* nonetheless utter the sounds 'I am not speaking or thinking'. Imagine, moreover, that my* cohorts are behaviorally conditioned to respond with 'That's false, since you say that you are not speaking, yet you are speaking when you say that.' Still, in an eliminativist world, these things are meaningless, so none of it would be true or false.But suppose we project the English onto my* utterance 'I am not speaking or thinking.' Under that pretense, my* utterance would then be false. For according to that pretense, I* am indeed speaking. So if we impose the that my* utterance has its English meaning, then I* speak falsely in uttering 'I* cannot speak or think anything'-even though I* cannot speak or think anything!Eliminativism is often said to be self-refuting, much in the manner of 'I am not speaking'. But eliminativism may be self-refuting only if we adopt the meaning pretense. And if eliminativism is false under that pretense, it does not follow that it is false. Or rather, it still could be a fact. My aim is to make all this clearer, but in doing so, I do not mean to endorse eliminativism. My aim is instead to show merely that certain objections against eliminativism are nondemonstrative, once the very idea of selfrefutation is seen as part of a pretense.Nonetheless, there is a price incurred by such pretense-theoretic eliminativism or fictionalism. The mental fictionalist must reject the language of mental fictionalism, and will be forced into a kind of quietism.1. What is Mental Fictionalism?Fictionalism, broadly speaking, is a nonrealist stance toward ontologically suspicious entities (numbers, possible worlds, morals, etc.). However, beyond the differences in entities, there is still a surprising variety among views that are called fictionalist. (For a general overview, see Kalderon 2005a; Eklund 2011; Kroon 2011.) Many apply the label 'fictionalist' even to van Fraassen's (1980) view of scientific unobservables. That is so, even though van Fraassen does not describe unobservables as fictions; he is rather agnostic about their existence.1Even among nonagnostic factionalisms, there are further key differences. Thus, Field's regards mathematical discourse as literally false (even though mathematics remains a rational activity, insofar as it is useful). In contrast, a modal fictionalist (cf. Rosen 1990; Nolan 1997; 2002) regards some modal statements as literally true despite the rejection of possible worlds.2 This is done by interpreting, e.g., 'I might have been a dentist' as saying that According to the fiction, there is a possible world where I became a dentist. (The fiction here is an unflattering reference to [the closure of] Lewis's Modal Realism; see Lewis 1968; 1973; 1986.) Importantly, it is literally true that there is such a world according to Lewis s view. Yet Lewis's view is seen as mere fiction; so the modal fictionalist is still able to deny that such a world exists.3The view I call fictionalism is modeled more after modal fictionalism.4 Roughly, it adopts the modal fictionalist's stance toward mentalistic discourse (i.e. …

Inscriptionalism and Intensionality

Intensional contexts are typically characterised by an apparent failure of either (A) the principle of the inter-substitution of co-referring terms salva veritate, or (B) existential generalisation. The difficulties which are seen to occur do so in contexts involving either modality or the propositional attitudes. In this paper attempts are made to determine whether or not Scheffler’s inscriptional analysis can provide a viable means of accounting for the problems which are thought to occur in intensional contexts. Somewhat unexpectedly, little effort has been made in the past to address this issue. In this paper it is shown that Scheffler’s theory may be employed to account for the difficulties mentioned above, though further work needs to be done to show precisely how his analysis may be adapted so as to handle modal statements. Popular objections to Scheffler’s inscriptionalism are also addressed, particularly in the light of his theory being used to account for the problems of intensionality. It is found that, with certain qualifications, the aforesaid objections do not show Scheffler’s theory to be an unviable means of accounting for the intensionality problems.