Weak Necessity Research Articles

Evidence Sensitivity in Weak Necessity Deontic Modals

Kolodny and MacFarlane have made a pioneering contribution to our understanding of how the interpretation of deontic modals can be sensitive to evidence and information. But integrating the discussion of information-sensitivity into the standard Kratzerian framework for modals suggests ways of capturing the relevant data without treating deontic modals as “informational modals” in their sense. I show that though one such way of capturing the data within the standard semantics fails, an alternative does not. Nevertheless I argue that we have good reasons to adopt an information-sensitive semantics of the general type Kolodny and MacFarlane describe. Contrary to the standard semantics, relative deontic value between possibilities sometimes depends on which possibilities are live. I develop an ordering semantics for deontic modals that captures this point and addresses various complications introduced by integrating the discussion of information-sensitivity into the standard semantic framework. By attending to these complexities, we can also illuminate various roles that information and evidence play in logical arguments, discourse, and deliberation.

Modality, Weights, and Inconsistent Premise Sets

This paper investigates two types of data that appear to motivate complicating the semantics for weak necessity modals. I argue that these data can be captured using the same conceptual resources within a conservative extension of the standard quantificational semantics. The resulting analysis illuminates previously puzzling and underappreciated semantic and pragmatic properties of weak and strong necessity modals, and clarifies the special role that expressions of weak necessity play in conversation, deliberation, and planning.

HOW TO RECONCILE ESSENCE WITH CONTINGENT EXISTENCE

To reconcile true claims of de re necessity with the supposedly contingent existence of the concrete objects those claims are typically about, Kripkean essentialists invoke weak necessity. The claim that a is necessarily F is held to be equivalent to the claim that necessarily, if a exists then a is F. This strategy faces a barrage of serious objections a proper subset of which shows that the strategy fails to achieve its intended purpose. Relief can be provided via recourse to a markedly non-Kripkean version of essentialism.11 I am grateful to Daniel Hill and to some graduate students at Liverpool for discussion, to the Faculty of Arts, University of Liverpool for granting me leave to work on this material and to the Department of Logic and Moral Philosophy, University of Santiago de Compostela for hosting me during the leave.

Weak necessity and truth theories

Weak necessity and truth theories