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Weak and Strong Necessity Modals
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Plunkett, D. Eliot, George |
| Copyright Year | 2018 |
| Abstract | This paper develops an account of the meaning of ‘ought’, and the distinction between weak necessity modals (‘ought’, ‘should’) and strong necessity modals (‘must’, ‘have to’). I argue that there is nothing specially “strong” about strong necessity modals per se: uses of ‘Must φ’ predicate the (deontic/epistemic/etc.) necessity of the prejacent φ of the actual world (evaluation world). The apparent “weakness” of weak necessity modals derives from their bracketing whether the necessity of the prejacent is verified in the actual world. ‘Oughtφ’ can be accepted without needing to settle that the relevant considerations (norms, expectations, etc.) that actually apply verify the necessity of φ. I call the basic account a modal-past approach to the weak/strong necessity modal distinction (for reasons that become evident). Several ways of implementing the approach in the formal semantics/pragmatics are critically examined. The account systematizes a wide range of linguistic phenomena: it generalizes across flavors of modality; it elucidates a special role thatweaknecessitymodals play in discourse andplanning; it captures contrasting logical, expressive, and illocutionary properties of weak and strong necessity modals; and it sheds light on how a notion of ‘ought’ is often expressed in other languages. These phenomena have resisted systematic explanation. In closing I briefly consider how linguistic inquiry into differences among necessity modals may improve theorizing on broader philosophical issues. *Thanks especially to Eric Swanson for extensive discussion and comments on earlier drafts. Thanks to Billy Dunaway for feedback on reining in the bloated beast that was the penultimate draft. Thanks also to Matthew Chrisman, Brendan Dill, Jan Dowell, Allan Gibbard, Irene Heim, Ezra Keshet, Dan Lassiter, David Plunkett, Paul Portner, Bernhard Salow, Robert Shanklin, Bob Stalnaker, and audiences at SALT 22, MIT, Northwestern, and USC. Preliminary versions of the paper were published in Silk 2012 and 2013d: ch. 2. My 2016b drew on material from earlier drafts. Portions of §7 are drawn from Silk 2015b. †Mary Garth, in Middlemarch, Bk. 2, Ch. 14. Shamelessly modified from the original. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://philpapers.org/archive/SILWAS.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
