The Meaning of ‘Actually’

Abstract

The paper is an investigation into the concept of actuality from the standpoint of the philosophy of language. It is argued that expressions such as ‘actually’ and ‘in fact’ are not indexicals like ‘here’ and ‘now’; when e.g. ‘Snow is actually white’ is uttered in a world, what proposition is conveyed does not depend on the world. Nor are such expressions ambiguous. The paper makes a suggestion about the role that ‘actually’ and its cognates do play. It is also argued that the sentence ⌜Actually S⌝ expresses a necessary truth only if S itself expresses one. In order to capture the necessitation of the proposition expressed in ⌜Actually S⌝, it is not sufficient to prefix the word ‘necessarily’.

The Semantics of Actuality Terms: Indexical vs. Descriptive Theories

“…We should similarly be able to classify the universe we inhabit and this universe as context‐sensitive without assuming that there are other universes (cf. Stephanou : 161–4, 168).…”

“…Despite arguing that ‘actually’ is not indexical, taking ‘p iff actually p’ to be an indubitable principle, and denying that ‘Actually snow is white’ expresses a necessary truth, Stephanou (: 178) says “We need to validate the principle ‘@p ⊃ □@P’.” For “This formula corresponds to a central aspect of the logic of ‘actually.’” Stephanou appears to mean that ‘@’ has the same meaning as ‘actually’ with wide scope (as in Lewis's Max conditional [i])—but not the same meaning as ‘actually’ with narrow scope (as in [ii]) (see Stephanou : 172–3). “Many sentences in which ‘actually’ occurs have two readings, one on which we use the ‘actually’ to talk about how things are in fact [wide‐scope] and one on which we do not [narrow].” (Stephanou : 154) Stephanou (: 173) introduces ‘actually 1 ’ for wide‐scope occurrences and ‘actually 2 ’ for those with narrow‐scope, asserting that “‘actually 1 ’ and ‘actually 2 ’ will not be synonymous.” This seems to entail that ‘actually’ has different meanings on different occasions, making it lexically ambiguous.…”

“…Embedding that sentence in the scope of a ‘necessarily’ will result in an ambiguity, yet we cannot hear any ambiguity in the sentence itself. (Stephanou : 173)…”

“…What then is the descriptive content of ‘actual’ if it is completely non‐indexical? Stephanou (: 172–3) suggests that the descriptive content of ‘actually’ is in reality . Then that of ‘actual’ would be real .…”

“…Modal logicians following Crossley & Humberstone () and Davies & Humberstone () adopt valuation functions for the actuality operator that give it the logic predicted by pure indexicalism. Its correctness for ‘actually’ in English is assumed by Soames () in his recent defense of indexicalism, and even by Stephanou () in a rare recent critique.…”