Modality in flux
| Title: | Modality in flux |
| Author: | Willer, Malte |
| Abstract: | I develop a novel semantic theory for modals that has important consequences for contemporary work in epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. My theory replaces the dominant view about semantics--that our best theory of meaning should ascribe truth-conditions to modalized sentences--with a non-truth-conditional yet fully compositional semantics for modals. Its contributions to current debates in analytic philosophy include an explanation of the possibility of modal disagreement that avoids relativism, a solution to the paradoxes about conditional obligations (including the gentle murder paradox), and new impulses for a generalized solution to the Frege-Geach problem for noncognitivism. |
| Subject: |
Dynamic semantics
Conditionals Deontic modals Epistemic modals Frege-Geach problem Noncognitivism |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2010-05-1097 |
| Date: | 2010-05 |
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