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An Update on Epistemic Modals

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Notes

  1. Versions of contextualism are developed in [9, 33, 62], and [53]. Kratzer’s analysis further restricts the domain of quantification to the closest worlds in the modal base, to be determined by a contextually provided ordering source, but this matter of detail need not detain us here. See [41] for an up-to-date discussion of her views.

  2. See again [16, 17, 60], and [45, 46]. I set aside here versions of relativism that allow for variation of content rather than of truth-value across points of assessment. See [44] for discussion.

  3. See also [10, 21, 70], and [13] for critical discussion of the problem of modal disagreement and whether it promotes relativism.

  4. Veltman’s original update rule for conjunction differs in that it treats conjunction as internally static: updating i with a ⌜ϕ ∧ ψ⌝ amounts to taking the intersection of i[ϕ] and i[ψ]. This difference need not detain us here.

  5. Update semantics also predicts that embedding an epistemic modal under another epistemic modal has no interesting semantic effects. A careful analysis of this prediction must be left to another day but see [49] for critical discussion.

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Acknowledgments

For comments and discussion, I would like to thank Chris Kennedy, Peter Klecha, Seth Yalcin, and the participants of the University of Chicago Workshop in Semantics and Philosophy of Language.

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    Malte Willer

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Willer, M. An Update on Epistemic Modals. J Philos Logic 44, 835–849 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-015-9364-8

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