New Horizons for a Theory of Epistemic Modals
Name
New Horizons AJP.pdf
Description
Submitted version
Size
664.61 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
118068ef7be4e9a8f042b215db953b33
Author(s)
Khoo, Justin Donald
Phillips, Jonathan
Date Issued
July 2018
Journal
Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Publisher
Australasian Association of Psychology and Philosophy
Citation
Khoo, Justin, and Jonathan Phillips. "New Horizons for a Theory of Epistemic Modals." Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97, 2 (July 2018): 309-324 © 2019 Informa UK Limited
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
Recent debate over the semantics and pragmatics of epistemic modals has focused on intuitions about cross-contextual truth-value assessments. In this paper, we advocate a different approach to evaluating theories of epistemic modals. Our strategy focuses on judgments of the incompatibility of two different epistemic possibility claims, or two different truth value assessments of a single epistemic possibility claim. We subject the predictions of existing theories to empirical scrutiny, and argue that existing contextualist and relativist theories are unable to account for the full pattern of observed judgments. As a way of illustrating the theoretical upshot of these results, we conclude by developing a novel theory of epistemic modals that is able to predict the results.
Keywords: epistemic modals, contextualism, relativism, truth
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2018.1484499
