Evidence Sensitivity in Weak Necessity Deontic Modals

Silk, Alex

doi:10.1007/s10992-013-9286-2

Cited by 17 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…To take just one example: Many authors in the literature on information‐sensitivity have argued that a deontic modal's domain of quantification can reflect what alternatives are best given a relevant body of information (e.g., Kolodny & MacFarlane , Cariani et al . 2011, Charlow , Dowell , Silk ). If this is right, then certain deontic modal claims may be understood as expressing one's derived preferences given one's information (beliefs, credences).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Be an Ethical Expressivist

Silk

2014

Philos Phenomenol Research

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Expressivism promises an illuminating account of the nature of normative judgment. But worries about the details of expressivist semantics have led many to doubt whether expressivism's putative advantages can be secured. Drawing on insights from linguistic semantics and decision theory, I develop a novel framework for implementing an expressivist semantics that I call ordering expressivism. I argue that by systematically interpreting the orderings that figure in analyses of normative terms in terms of the basic practical attitude of conditional weak preference, the expressivist can explain the semantic properties of normative sentences in terms of the logical properties of that attitude. Expressivism's problems with capturing the logical relations among normative sentences can be reduced to the familiar, more tractable problem of explaining certain coherence constraints on preferences. Particular attention is given to the interpretation of wide-scope negation. The proposed solution is also extended to other types of embedded contexts-most notably, disjunctions.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Be an Ethical Expressivist

Silk

2014

Philos Phenomenol Research

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…(For arguments against alternative explanations for the apparent consistency of the sentences in (21), e.g. context‐sensitivity or wide‐scoping, see Kolodny and MacFarlane, ; Cariani, Kaufmann and Kaufmann, ; Carr, ; and Silk, .) This fact about iffy ought s is consistent with Kratzer semantics.…”

Section: Puzzle Casesmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…For defenses, again, see Kolodny and MacFarlane, ; Cariani, Kaufmann and Kaufmann, ; Charlow, ; Carr, ; and Silk, . For dissident voices, see Dowell, ; Bronfmann and Dowell, forthcoming.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The If P, Ought P Problem

Carr

2014

Pacific Philosophical Qtr

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Kratzer semantics for modals and conditionals generates the prediction that sentences of the form if p, ought p are trivially true. As Frank and Zvolenszky show, for certain flavors of modality, like deontic modality, this prediction is false. I explain some conservative solutions to the problem, and then argue that they are inadequate to account for puzzle cases involving self-frustrating oughts. These cases illustrate a general problem: there are two forms of information-sensitivity in deontic modals. Even generalizations of Kratzer semantics that predict these two roles for information, e.g. Kolodny and MacFarlane, predict that they vary together. I propose a generalization of Kratzer semantics that allows the two roles for information to vary independently of each other.

show abstract

“…In the literature on the Miners Paradox so far two kinds of interpretation have been employed to meet the above desideratum: emendations of the semantics for modal expressions and conditional sentences developed especially by Kratzer (e.g., 1981) and extensions of update semantics (Veltman, ). The former approach was initiated by Kolodny and MacFarlane themselves, and has been developed in various directions by Cariani et al (), Charlow (), Silk (), Bledin () and Carr (). The latter approach is taken by Willer (, ) and Marra ().…”

Section: Preliminary Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%