Now Playing: COUNTERFACTUALS WEEK (REPOSTED)
Topic: Counterfactuals
Modals and a Compositional Account of Counterfactuals
By Nicholas Asher & Eric McCready
There are lots of modals that we might include in this account must, ought phi, should phi, all suggest universal quantifications over deontic possibilities while may, as Kamp (1973) suggested, introduces deontic possibilities. It's a delicate matter to ground the deontic alternatives in the epistemic possibilities (Asher 1987). But it appears that the following approach, on which we extended a dynamic semantics with a dynamic account of modals, can accommodate these modals as well. The semantics we have developed [here] handles both the modal subordination facts and Veltman-style update phenomena and it provides a compositional account of counterfactuals that has at least some pleasing features, including a connection to normality conditionals and the non-monotonic notion of inference that has come to be associated with them.
Source: Semantics Archive
Posted by Tony Marmo
at 00:01 GMT
Updated: Sunday, 4 December 2005 07:13 GMT
