Counterfactuals all the way down? Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9437-9 Authors Jim Woodward, History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Barry Loewer, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA John W. Carroll, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103, USA Marc Lange, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3125—Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3125, USA Journal Metascience Online (...) ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796 Journal Volume Volume 20 Journal Issue Volume 20, Number 1. (shrink)

Many philosophers have suggested that claims of need play a special normative role in ethical thought and talk. But what do such claims mean? What does this special role amount to? Progress on these questions can be made by attending to a puzzle concerning some linguistic differences between two types of 'need' sentence: one where 'need' occurs as a verb, and where it occurs as a noun. I argue that the resources developed to solve the puzzle advance our understanding of (...) the metaphysics of need, the meaning of 'need' sentences, and the function of claims of need in ethical discourse. (shrink)

This paper refutes the widespread view that disjunctions of imperatives invariably grant free choice between the actions named by their disjuncts. Like other disjunctions they can also express a correlation with some factual distinction, but as with modalized declaratives used for non-assertive speech acts this needs to be indicated explicitly. A compositional analysis of one such indicator, depending on, constitutes the point of departure for a uniform analysis of disjunctions across clause types. Disjunctions are analyzed as sets of propositional alternatives (...) that correlate with a partition that the speaker may or may not be able to indicate explicitly. Free choice arises as the specific case where the partition is induced by the preferences of the addressee. (shrink)

This paper advances a reductive semantics for ‘ought’ and a naturalistic theory of normativity. It gives a unified analysis of predictive, instrumental, and categorical uses of ‘ought’: the predictive ‘ought’ is basic, and is interpreted in terms of probability. Instrumental ‘oughts’ are analyzed as predictive ‘oughts’ occurring under an ‘in order that’ modifer (the end-relational theory). The theory is then extended to categorical uses of ‘ought’: it is argued that they are special rhetorical uses of the instrumental ‘ought’. Plausible conversational (...) principles explain how this end-relational ‘ought’ can perform the expressive functions of the moral ‘ought’. The notion of an ‘ought-simpliciter’ is also discussed. (shrink)

The claim that epistemic oughts stem from the “role” of believer is widely discussed in the epistemological discourse. This claim seems to stem from the common view that, in some sense, epistemic norms derive from what it is to be a believer. Against this view, I argue that there is no such thing as a “role” of believer. But there is a role of knower, and this is the role to which some epistemic norms—epistemic role oughts—are attached. Once we conceive (...) of epistemic role oughts as attaching to the role of knower (and not the “role” of believer) we can better understand the nature of epistemic obligation and doxastic control. In advancing a new epistemic role ought approach that recognizes knowers as the subjects of epistemic role oughts, I explain why many epistemic oughts—epistemic role oughts—have normative force and presuppose voluntary control. (shrink)

I argue that modal epistemology should pay more attention to questions about the structure and function of modal thought. We can treat these questions from synchronic and diachronic angles. From a synchronic perspective, I consider whether a general argument for the epistemic support of modal though can be made on the basis of modal thoughs’s indispensability for what Enoch and Schechter (2008) call rationally required epistemic projects. After formulating the argument, I defend it from various objections. I also examine the (...) possibility of considering the indispensability of modal thought in terms of its components. Finally, I argue that we also need to approach these issues from a diachronic perspective, and I sketch how to approach this task. (shrink)

Pelkey’s anchoring of the semiotic square in embodiment is excellent news for cognitive literary theory, a dynamic field still in search of itself. However, his validation of the square, though theoretically unexceptionable, suffers in the execution, for his interpretation of the country song “Follow your Arrow” is less successful. The present article benefits from Pelkey’s validation as it organizes a tool of cultural-semantic analysis (CS-tool) as a ‘deviant’ semiotic square. The article then shows how this particular semiotic square allows us (...) to analyze the song in terms which build on Pelkey’s analysis, but also arrive at more satisfying results. Where Pelkey sees liberation in the song and the square, the tool uncovers manipulation in the former and closure in the latter. The article then assesses the complementarity of and differences between the two squares: Pelkey works on a local sentence-level through direct implicature, thus following the narrative/authorial voice of the poem. The CS-tool starts from a position of higher abstraction requiring a less defined, but still sufficient and more wide-ranging, three-step implicature. This allows the tool to step back from the song’s authorial voice and uncover its manipulations. The article closes by discussing the deviant features of the present square. (shrink)

Contextualism about ‘might’ says that the property that ‘might’ expresses varies from context to context. I argue against contextualism. I focus on problems that contextualism apparently has with attitude ascriptions in which ‘might’ appears in an embedded ‘that’-clause. I argue that contextualists can deal rather easily with many of these problems, but I also argue that serious difficulties remain with collective and quantified says-that ascriptions. Herman Cappelen and John Hawthorne atempt to deal with these remaining problems, but I argue that (...) their attempt fails. (shrink)

Invariantism about ‘might’ says that ‘might’ semantically expresses the same modal property in every context. This paper presents and defends a version of invariantism. According to it, ‘might’ semantically expresses the same weak modal property in every context. However, speakers who utter sentences containing ‘might’ typically assert propositions concerning stronger types of modality, including epistemic modality. This theory can explain the phenomena that motivate contextualist theories of epistemic uses of ‘might’, and can be defended from objections of the sort that (...) relativists mount against contextualist theories. (shrink)

Imagine that Ann, asked to name her favorite treat, answers: 1. Licorice is tasty Imagine that Ben, having hidden some licorice in the cupboard, whispers to Ann: 2. There might be licorice in the cupboard. What if any role is played by perspective—whom the licorice is tasty to, whose evidence allows for licorice in the cupboard—in the semantics of such sentences?

There is an account of modal operators that is both elegant and powerful and that deserves to be called the standard account. There are, however, some epistemic uses of modal operators which seem to be counterexamples to the account – they pose what I call the objectivity problem. It is often thought that the objectivity problem can be fixed by a certain kind of modification to the standard account. I argue that this kind of modification cannot work. Then I argue (...) that the problem posed for the standard account by recently discussed eavesdropper cases is really just the objectivity problem in a different guise, thereby emphasizing the need for a new solution to the objectivity problem. Finally, I propose a new solution to the objectivity problem. (shrink)

Linguistic mood is a grammatical term as well as a morphological category of the verb. Due to its often philosophical implications it is challenging to find a definition or a common understanding of the notion; it has been proven historically and linguistically difficult to analyze. In this essay I aim to cast new light upon and interpret the concept of mood in extended, philosophical manners. The argument of the essay is that the traditional approach to the notion is done in (...) ways that omit fundamental aspects of it, as well as puts it into a framework that tries to explain it in ways through which it cannot fully be explained. Thus the thesis is that there is more to the notion than what meets the eye. The idea is to find this through the work of phenomenologists. Alongside a linguistic use, the word mood [Modus/mode] is also being used in philosophy, most notably within a phenomenological discourse. Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty all use the word. By going through a close-reading of the concept, I argue for the proximity between the linguistic and the phenomenological adaption of mood and show how they are ontologically related; the objective is to suggest that there is more common ground between them than the mere name. By concentrating on this term I want to further examine in what way a phenomenological understanding of language can challenge an overly narrow, one-dimensional understanding, which I see as a fault shared by the linguists. (shrink)

way on the information available in the contexts in which they are used, it’s not surprising that there is a minor but growing industry of work in semantics and the philosophy of language concerned with the precise nature of the context-dependency of epistemically modalized sentences. Take, for instance, an epistemic might-claim like..