Strengthened, and weakened, by belief
Tue Trinh
TL;DR
The paper explores how adjectives and adverbs like 'certain' and 'possibly' differ in how they relate to knowledge and belief.
Contribution
The paper introduces a novel hypothesis that adjectives quantify over knowledge while adverbs quantify over belief.
Findings
Adjectival modals like 'certain' are interpreted as universal quantifiers over knowledge.
Adverbial modals like 'certainly' are interpreted as quantifiers over belief.
The analysis relies on the claim that knowledge implies belief.
Abstract
This paper discusses a set of observations, many of which are novel, concerning differences between the adjectival modals certain and possible and their adverbial counterparts certainly and possibly. It argues that the observations can be derived from a standard interpretation of certain/certainly as universal and possible/possibly as existential quantifiers over possible worlds, in conjunction with the hypothesis that the adjectives quantify over knowledge and the adverbs quantify over belief. The claims on which the argument relies include the following: (i) knowledge implies belief, (ii) agents have epistemic access to their belief, (iii) relevance is closed under speakers’ belief, and (iv) commitment is pragmatically inconsistent with explicit denial of belief.
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Taxonomy
TopicsEpistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge