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    Made withinDC&Austin
    Propositions expressed by epistemic modal sentences can v... — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    Propositions expressed by epistemic modal sentences can vary in truth-value depending on the context of assessment, not just the context of utterance.

    Modality & PossibilityPhilosophy of Language
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.The sentence 'The murderer might have been on campus at midnight' can be true when uttered in one context but false when evaluated in a second context.
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    • 2.The truth of the second utterance implies that the proposition expressed by the first utterance—agreed to be true relative to that context—is false relative to the second context.
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    • 3.This variation cannot be explained merely by sentences expressing different propositions relative to different contexts, since it is the same proposition whose truth-value varies.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Epistemic modal sentences like 'might p' are context-sensitive indexicals whose propositional content is fixed at utterance, not assessment.
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    • 2.When a second speaker says 'The murderer might not have been on campus,' they express a numerically distinct proposition relative to their own epistemic state, not a reassessment of the first proposition.
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    • 3.Apparent truth-value variation across contexts is fully explained by the standard Kaplanian framework of context-dependent content without invoking a separate index of assessment.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.MacFarlane's relativism conflates the pragmatic phenomenon of retraction with the semantic phenomenon of propositional truth-value variation.
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    • 2.The social norm compelling a speaker to retract 'it might be raining' upon learning it is not raining is best explained by Gricean updating of conversational commitments, not by the original proposition becoming false.
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    • 3.Positing contexts of assessment multiplies semantic machinery beyond necessity when a pragmatic account of retraction norms is already independently motivated.
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    Topics

    Philosophy of LanguageModality & Possibility

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    Truth & Knowledge1 linked

    Related

    Apparent truth-value variation across contexts is fully explained by the standar...Epistemic modal sentences like 'might p' are context-sensitive indexicals whose ...MacFarlane's relativism conflates the pragmatic phenomenon of retraction with th...Positing contexts of assessment multiplies semantic machinery beyond necessity w...
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    The sentence 'The murderer might have been on campus at midnight' can be true wh...The social norm compelling a speaker to retract 'it might be raining' upon learn...The truth of the second utterance implies that the proposition expressed by the ...This variation cannot be explained merely by sentences expressing different prop...When a second speaker says 'The murderer might not have been on campus,' they ex...

    Similar

    Relativism about epistemic modals holds that propositions can differ i...90%A purely contextualist treatment of epistemic modals is insufficient t...83%If contextualism about epistemic modals is correct, then the semantics...81%De re modal assertions about an object are semantically equivalent to ...80%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
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    But this is puzzling. It is not puzzling that the sentence “The murderer might have been on campus at midnight” could be true when uttered in the first context but false when uttered in the second context; that fact could be accommodated by any number of contextualist treatments of epistemic modals, which would dissolve the puzzle by saying that the sentence expresses different propositions relative to the two contexts. The puzzle is that the truth of the second sentence seems to imply that the
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit