The Semantics of Actuality Terms: Indexical vs. Descriptive Theories

‘Actually’ again

“…340–342) offers an argument to the effect that such sentences are true. Davis (2015, p. 491), on the other hand, finds an analogous sentence ‘unambiguously false’, and similar intuitions are voiced by Melia (1992, p. 49) and Haraldsen (2015, p. 648); Crossley and Humberstone (1977, p. 17) had anticipated such intuitions. The word ‘necessarily’ here expresses, not a concept of epistemic or deontic necessity, but one that makes ‘necessarily …’ equivalent to ‘however things might have been, it would be the case that …’.…”

“…A similar function can be claimed for the adjective ‘actual’. Some authors, however, have argued that ‘actually’ and its kin cannot play that role and so are semantically quite unlike the actuality operator (Davis, 2015; Haraldsen, 2015; Yalcin, 2015; Mackay, 2017). I will argue that they can.…”

“…Closer inspection shows that if we omit ‘actually’ and the like from such examples, the resulting sentences have just the same meaning (Davis, 2015, pp. 482 and 495; Mackay, 2017, pp.…”

“…What is, then, the role of those expressions? According to Davis (2015), ‘actually’ is semantically related to the phrase ‘in the actual world’, and the description ‘the actual world’ means ‘the world w such that everything true in w is true’; the only difference he recognizes between ‘actually’ and ‘in the actual world’ is that the former cannot replace the latter when ‘the actual world’ is given a wider scope than its position in the sentence indicates. According to Mackay (2017), ‘actually’ has no effect on truth‐conditions, but when a speaker says ‘actually S ’, the ‘actually’ signals that there is a salient information state of which the information she presupposes when uttering S is not an extension.…”

Actual Issues for Relevant Logics

“…See Lewis (1970) and Lewis (1986: 92-96). For discussion, see Adams (1974), Gale (1989), Stephanou (2010), and Davis (2013).…”