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“Ought” and intensionality

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Abstract

The syntactic structure of the deontic “ought” has been much debated in philosophy and linguistics. Schroeder argues that the deontic “ought” is syntactically ambiguous in the sense that it can be associated with either a control or raising construction. He distinguishes between deliberative and evaluative “ought”s and argues that the deliberative “ought” is control while the evaluative “ought” is raising. However, if there is a control sense of “ought,” it implies that there is a sense of “ought” in which the word carries an external argument. Chrisman (Australas J Philos 90(3):433–451, 2012) proposes two linguistic tests (i.e. “er”-nominalization and passivization) to verify this prediction. I add a new test, which I call the intensionality test, to the list.

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Notes

  1. For the “ought to do”/“ought to be” distinction, see Chisholm (1964), Geach (1982), Jackson (1985), Feldman (1986), Brennan (1993) and Bhatt (1998). Different theories have used different terminology for this distinction. For example, this distinction corresponds to Humberstone’s (1971) agent-implicating and situational “ought”s, Wedgwood’s (2006) practical and political “ought”s, Price’s (2008) agential and situational “ought”s, and Schroeder’s (2011) deliberative and evaluative “ought”s, etc.

  2. See Harman (1973), Geach (1982), Brennan (1993), Price (2008), Schroeder (2011), Broome (2013) and Wedgwood (2006).

  3. “Ought” is generally thought to take a true epistemic reading. But Yalcin (2016) challenges this commonly-held view. He argues that the seemingly epistemic “ought” expresses a normality reading and calls this reading a pseudo-epistemic reading.

  4. However, this doesn’t mean that the Kratzerian account is not extendable to control modal verbs. That is, even if “ought-to-do” modals turn out to be control verbs, there is a way to accommodate the control sense of “ought” in the Kratzerian framework (von Fintel and Heim 2011; Kaufmann 2012). If “ought-to-do” modals are control verbs, they can be treated like propositional attitude verbs such as “want” and “believe.” Let B be the set of worlds compatible with what the subject x believes at the world w. Given (1), the lexical entry for “believe” can be defined like (2).

    (1) B = λxe. λws. {w′: w′ is compatible with what x believes in w}

    (2) ⟦“believe”⟧  = λp<s,t>. λxe. λws. ∀w ∈ B(w)(x) [p(w) = 1]

    According to (2), “x believes that p” is true at w iff p is true at all worlds compatible with x’s beliefs at w. Similarly, let f be the set of worlds compatible with the subject x’s obligations/desires/purposes at w. Given (3), the lexical entry for the control “ought” can be defined like (4).

    1. (3)

      a. fdeontic = λxe. λws. {w′: w′ is compatible with x’s obligations in w}

      b. fbouletic = λxe. λws. {w′: w′ is compatible with x’s desires in w}

      c. fteleological = λxe. λws. {w′: w′ is compatible with x’s goals in w}

    2. (4)

      ⟦“oughtcontrol”⟧  = λf<e,<s,<s,t>>>. λp<s,t>. λxe. λws. ∀w ∈ f(w)(x) [p(w) = 1]

    (4) is a simplified lexical entry for the control “ought” in the sense that it’s not doubly relativized. But it shouldn’t be difficult to implement this idea in the doubly-relative modal semantics. The main difference between (2) and (4) is whether the domain accessible from the base world w is context-sensitive or not. Also, while the domain for the raising “ought” is a function of a world, the domain for the control “ought” is a function of an individual and a world. Compare (4) with (5), which is a simplified lexical entry for the raising “ought.”

    (5) ⟦“oughtraising”⟧  = λf<s,<s,t>>>. λp<s,t>. λws. ∀w ∈ f(w) [p(w) = 1].

  5. More specifically, we are interested in whether the deliberative “ought” is a subject control verb. There are two kinds of control verbs: subject control and object control verbs. Subject control verbs (e.g., “want,” “try,” “expect,” etc.) express two-place relations between an external agent and a property/proposition. Object control verbs (e.g., “advise,” “order,” “tell,” etc.) express three-place relations between an external agent, an internal theme, and a property/proposition.

  6. Strictly speaking, (3a) involves at least two movements. “John” begins in Spec VP where it receives the external theta-role of “dance.” And then it moves up through the embedded Spec TP to the matrix Spec TP.

    (Raising) [TP Johni seems [TP ti to [VP ti dance]]].

  7. On the traditional account of control constructions, control constructions involve an implicit pronoun PRO. In this paper, I’ll present my arguments within the traditional framework that posits PRO. But on some alternative approach, which is usually called the movement theory of control (e.g., Hornstein 1999; Manzini and Roussou 2000), PRO doesn’t exist and control constructions are explained in terms of movement. However, even on this approach, there is a control-raising distinction. In control constructions, the subject receives two theta-roles: one from the main verb (e.g., “want” in (4)) and one from the embedded verb (e.g., “dance” in (4)). In raising constructions, the subject receives only one theta-role. That is, one from the embedded verb (e.g., “dance” in (3)).

  8. This paper mainly concerns arguments against the ambiguity view. But Schroeder provides some positive arguments for the ambiguity view. These arguments will be briefly discussed later in this paper.

  9. According to the traditional lexicalist approach to argument structures (Chomsky 1981; Baker 1988, 1997; Dowty 1989, 1990; Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995), the information about the argument structure of a verb such as how many arguments and what kinds of arguments a verb has is encoded in the lexical meaning of a verb. In this paper, I formulate my arguments within this traditional framework. But it should be possible to re-formulate them in other frameworks as long as they make sense of the argument-modifier distinction. For some alternative approaches to argument structures, see Hale and Keyser (2002), Harley (1995), Borer (2005) and Ramchand (2008).

  10. Alternatively, one can say that the external argument is not an argument of a verb, but an argument of another functional projection (Marantz 1984; Kratzer 1996). For how the external argument can be represented in LFs, see fn.15.

  11. “-er” can be thought of as picking out the external argument of a verb. Also, the passive morpheme “-en” is generally thought of as transforming the argument structure of a verb by deleting/absorbing the external agent theta role of an active verb (Baker et al. 1989; Carnie 2013; Chomsky 1981; Jaeggli 1986).

  12. It has often been pointed out (Chrisman 2012; Finlay and Snedegar 2014, ft. 39) that the deliberative-evaluative distinction can be found not merely in “ought”-sentences but in all deontic modals including “should” and “have to.” If this is the case, the ambiguity view will need to be committed to the ambiguity in other deontic modals as well. However, it is not clear how the etymological explanation can generalize to other deontic modals such as “should” and “have to.” The base form of “should” is “shall,” but “shall” does not allow for er-nominalization (i.e., *“shaller”) and passivization (i.e., *“shalled”). If the base form “shall” does not carry any argument for agents, “should” also does not carry any argument for agents. Furthermore, since “have to” is simply not past-tensed, the etymological explanation cannot be applied to “have to.”

  13. What I mean by this is the extension of “exist.” “Exist” can be tensed (e.g., “existed,” “exists,” “will exist,” etc.), and the extension of “exist” varies depending on time. For example, (5) is present-tensed, so if (5) is true this implies that Obama exists at the present time.

  14. Quine (1960) proposes another test for extensionality. That is, if a linguistic context is extensional, two co-referential terms can be substituted without change in truth-value. I’ll come back to this test in Sect. 3.

  15. One possible explanation of this phenomenon is that the external argument is not an argument of the main verb, but an argument of another projection (Marantz 1984; Kratzer 1996). In this view, control verbs do not carry external arguments. Nonetheless, control verbs impose certain requirements on the argument structure of the clauses they appear in, so they can appear only in the structure in which the external argument is projected. In this view, the logical forms for (5) and (6) can be represented as follows:

    (5*) ∃e [Ag/Exp(e) = Obamai and Want(e, PROi meets Newman)]

    (6*) ∃e [Ag/Exp(e) = Newmani and Want(e, PROi meets Obama)]

    (5*) can be read as “there is some event e such that the agent/experiencer of e is Obama and e is the event of wanting to meet Newman.” (6*) can be read as “there is some event e such that the agent/experiencer of e is Newman and e is the event of wanting to meet Obama.” In (5*), “Newman” appears in the scope of the intensional operator “want.” On the other hand, in (6*), “Newman” appears outside of the scope of “want.”

  16. One might present the following as a potential counterexample to the intensionality test. Suppose I am watching a group of schoolchildren and they all want to eat ice cream. Let "Fast" denote whichever of the children will first finish their assignment. It seems that "Fast wants to eat ice cream" sounds fine. Everyone wants to eat ice cream, so Fast (whoever s/he might be) wants to eat ice cream. However, the main reason this inference sounds fine is that it is presupposed that Fast exists now but we don’t know yet who s/he is. Suppose that “Newman” denotes the first-born baby in the twenty-second century, so s/he doesn’t exist now. Compare the above inference with the following: Everyone wants to eat ice cream, so #/?Newman wants to eat ice cream. This inference does not sound as good as the first one. This is because it is not presupposed that Newman exists now and so Newman cannot be included in the domain of “everyone”.

  17. I thank an anonymous referee for bringing this objection to my attention.

  18. An anonymous referee mentioned the first strategy. And I developed the last two ideas in conversation with Schroeder (p.c.), though he is not officially committed to any of them.

  19. We can make the same point with (8a, b) and (8c).

  20. According to the response, the deliberative reading is due to the control construction of “ought,” and it is the strong necessity part that gives rise to the control construction. So, it predicts that strong necessity modals are ambiguous between raising and control constructions and thus they have deliberative readings.

  21. One might wonder if the etymological explanation for “ought” is also available for strong necessity modals. It might work for “must” but not for “have to”. “Have to” is a strong necessity modal, but it is clearly not past-tensed in itself. It can take the past-tense morpheme (i.e., “had to”).

  22. Wedgwood himself claims that his view is a propositional operator view. But I argue that there is a discrepancy between what he says and what he has to say. I argue that his view collapses into a relational view, so he has to say that his view is relational.

  23. In his original suggestion, “ought” carries two types of indices: the agent and time indexes. But in this paper, I will ignore the time index.

  24. I am assuming that binding is essentially a syntactic phenomenon, or at least requires some kind of syntactic mechanism.

  25. It might be worth noting that Heim and Kratzer (1998) posit an index as a node as a result of quantifier raising. In their semantic theory, the movement of a quantifier phrase has two effects: (i) it leaves a trace t with an index i and (ii) it introduces an index i right below the moved phrase, which functions as a variable binder that binds the trace ti. It seems mysterious how an index alone can take a node and function as a variable binder. In response to this problem, Heim and Kratzer might claim that quantifier-raising (i) leaves a trace ti and (ii) introduces a variable binder OPi that binds the trace ti. However, the strategy of positing an empty operator has been questioned by Collins (2017) and Pietroski (2018).

  26. Wedgwood’s view might be revised as follows: On Kratzer’s account, conversational backgrounds are functions of possible worlds (i.e., “f(w)”). One alternative to this is to say that conversational backgrounds are functions of individuals and times (e.g., “f(x, t)”). If his view is revised this way, it can remain as a propositional operator view, because individuals are treated as an argument of conversational backgrounds of “ought,” not “ought” itself.

  27. These examples are from Schroeder (2007).

  28. On Schroeder’s account, reasons count in favor of actions/properties, rather than propositions and “reason” is ambiguous between a triadic relation between a fact, an agent, and an action (for agent-relative readings) and a dyadic relation between a fact and an action (for agent-neutral readings). On his account, the logical forms for (24) and (25) can be represented as follows:

    (24a*) Reason (p, \( \Phi \)), where p is a fact and \( \Phi \) is an action/property.

    (24b*) ∃p Reason (p, \( \Phi \)), where \( \Phi \) is an action/property.

    (25a*) Reason (p, S, \( \Phi \)), where p is a fact, S is an agent, and \( \Phi \) is an action/property.

    (25b*) ∃p Reason (p, S, \( \Phi \)), where S is an agent, \( \Phi \) is an action/property.

  29. I remain neutral on whether “reason” expresses a triadic relation or a dyadic relation. Still, the view developed here is distinguished from Schroeder’s view in that (i) reasons count in favor of propositions, rather than actions, and (ii) agent-neutral reason ascriptions are special cases of agent-relative reason ascriptions so that reason ascriptions are not syntactically ambiguous.

  30. Lebeaux (2009) also posits an implicit operator that binds PROarb but is not committed to what this operator is.

  31. The difference between (31a) and (31b) may be captured by the following logical forms:

    (31a*) ∀x ∃p Reason (p, x helps Katie) (LF for individual readings)

    (31b*) ∃p Reason (p, ∀x[x helps Katie]) (LF for collective readings).

  32. One might wonder whether PRO is mandatory or optional. On the traditional account of control constructions that posits PRO, PRO seems to be mandatory. This is because syntactic theories such as the theta theory and the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) require the subject position of a clause to be always occupied.

  33. Many thanks to Elli Neufeld, Frank Hong, Anthony Nguyen, David Boylan, Barry Schein, Alexis Wellwood, Deniz Rudin, Fabrizio Cariani, Mark Schroeder, Steve Finlay, Ralph Wedgwood, and an audience at the American Philosophical Association (APA) Eastern Division meeting, 2020 for very helpful discussions. Further thanks to two anonymous referees for this journal for very thorough and insightful comments.

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Lee, J. “Ought” and intensionality. Synthese 199, 4621–4643 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02994-5

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