Seth Yalcin
Biographic Data
| ID | 1120544 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Seth Yalcin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Seth |
| FAMILY NAME | Yalcin |
| SIGNATURE | YALCIN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2227-0226 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Defining common ground
Stalnaker ( Context , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014) defends two ideas about common ground. The first is that the common ground of a conversation is definable in terms of an iterated propositional attitude of acceptance , so that p is common ground iff p is commonly accepted. The second is the idea that the “default setting" of conversational acceptance is belief, so that as a default, what is accepted in conversation coincides with what …
Metasemantic Relationism
Consider a language incorporating a mirror-image form of assertion, where the norm is to express what you take to be false rather than what you take to be true. Why aren’t ordinary languages like that? Why do we generally assert what we take to be true rather than what we take to be false? If Lewis (1975) and Massey (1978) are right, there is a sense in which the question is based on a mistake, and in which English (etc.) could be described eithe…
Belief as Question‐Sensitive
Epistemic Modality De Re
Focusing on cases which involve binding into epistemic modals with definite descriptions and quantifiers, I raise some new problems for standard approaches to all of these expressions. The difficulties are resolved in a semantic framework that is dynamic in character. I close with a new class of problems about de re readings within the scope of modals.
Quantifying in from a Fregean Perspective
As Quine (1956) observed, the following sentence has a reading which, if true, would be of special interest to the authorities:(1) Ralph believes that someone is a spy.This is the reading where the quantifier is naturally understood as taking wide scope relative to the attitude verb and as binding a variable within the scope of the attitude verb. This essay is interested in addressing the question what the semantic analysis of this kind of readin…
Epistemic modals and context
Recently, a number of theorists (MacFarlane (2003, 2011), Egan, Hawthorne & Weatherson (2005), Egan (2007), Stephenson (2007a,b)) have argued that an adequate semantics and pragmatics for epistemic modals calls for some technical notion of relativist truth and/or relativist content. Much of this work has relied on an empirical thesis about speaker judgments, namely that competent speakers tend to judge a present-tense bare epistemic possibility c…
Nonfactualism about Epistemic Modality
The standard view about epistemic modals includes a commitment to both descriptivism and factualism. Descriptivism is the thesis that epistemic modal talk serves fundamentally to describe some feature of reality. Factualism is the view that there is a certain class of facts, the facts about what is (epistemically) possible, or probable, or necessary. This chapter aims to develop an alternative to the factualist picture. The positive account the c…
Probability Operators
This is a study in the meaning of natural language probability operators , sentential operators such as probably and likely . We ask what sort of formal structure is required to model the logic and semantics of these operators. Along the way we investigate their deep connections to indicative conditionals and epistemic modals, probe their scalar structure, observe their sensitivity to contextually salient contrasts, and explore some of their scop…
Epistemic Modals
Epistemic modal operators give rise to something very like, but also very unlike, Moore's paradox. I set out the puzzling phenomena, explain why a standard relational semantics for these operators cannot handle them, and recommend an alternative semantics. A pragmatics appropriate to the semantics is developed and interactions between the semantics, the pragmatics, and the definition of consequence are investigated. The semantics is then extended…
Belief as Question‐Sensitive
Probability Operators
This is a study in the meaning of natural language probability operators , sentential operators such as probably and likely . We ask what sort of formal structure is required to model the logic and semantics of these operators. Along the way we investigate their deep connections to indicative conditionals and epistemic modals, probe their scalar structure, observe their sensitivity to contextually salient contrasts, and explore some of their scop…
Quantifying in from a Fregean Perspective
As Quine (1956) observed, the following sentence has a reading which, if true, would be of special interest to the authorities:(1) Ralph believes that someone is a spy.This is the reading where the quantifier is naturally understood as taking wide scope relative to the attitude verb and as binding a variable within the scope of the attitude verb. This essay is interested in addressing the question what the semantic analysis of this kind of readin…
Epistemic Modals
Epistemic modal operators give rise to something very like, but also very unlike, Moore's paradox. I set out the puzzling phenomena, explain why a standard relational semantics for these operators cannot handle them, and recommend an alternative semantics. A pragmatics appropriate to the semantics is developed and interactions between the semantics, the pragmatics, and the definition of consequence are investigated. The semantics is then extended…
Probability Operators
This is a study in the meaning of natural language probability operators , sentential operators such as probably and likely . We ask what sort of formal structure is required to model the logic and semantics of these operators. Along the way we investigate their deep connections to indicative conditionals and epistemic modals, probe their scalar structure, observe their sensitivity to contextually salient contrasts, and explore some of their scop…
Nonfactualism about Epistemic Modality
The standard view about epistemic modals includes a commitment to both descriptivism and factualism. Descriptivism is the thesis that epistemic modal talk serves fundamentally to describe some feature of reality. Factualism is the view that there is a certain class of facts, the facts about what is (epistemically) possible, or probable, or necessary. This chapter aims to develop an alternative to the factualist picture. The positive account the c…
Epistemic modals and context
Recently, a number of theorists (MacFarlane (2003, 2011), Egan, Hawthorne & Weatherson (2005), Egan (2007), Stephenson (2007a,b)) have argued that an adequate semantics and pragmatics for epistemic modals calls for some technical notion of relativist truth and/or relativist content. Much of this work has relied on an empirical thesis about speaker judgments, namely that competent speakers tend to judge a present-tense bare epistemic possibility c…
Epistemic Modality De Re
Focusing on cases which involve binding into epistemic modals with definite descriptions and quantifiers, I raise some new problems for standard approaches to all of these expressions. The difficulties are resolved in a semantic framework that is dynamic in character. I close with a new class of problems about de re readings within the scope of modals.
Quantifying in from a Fregean Perspective
As Quine (1956) observed, the following sentence has a reading which, if true, would be of special interest to the authorities:(1) Ralph believes that someone is a spy.This is the reading where the quantifier is naturally understood as taking wide scope relative to the attitude verb and as binding a variable within the scope of the attitude verb. This essay is interested in addressing the question what the semantic analysis of this kind of readin…
Belief as Question‐Sensitive
Metasemantic Relationism
Consider a language incorporating a mirror-image form of assertion, where the norm is to express what you take to be false rather than what you take to be true. Why aren’t ordinary languages like that? Why do we generally assert what we take to be true rather than what we take to be false? If Lewis (1975) and Massey (1978) are right, there is a sense in which the question is based on a mistake, and in which English (etc.) could be described eithe…
Defining common ground
Stalnaker ( Context , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014) defends two ideas about common ground. The first is that the common ground of a conversation is definable in terms of an iterated propositional attitude of acceptance , so that p is common ground iff p is commonly accepted. The second is the idea that the “default setting" of conversational acceptance is belief, so that as a default, what is accepted in conversation coincides with what …
Computer Science (8 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (5 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (5 works) · Verb (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (3 works) · Metaphysics (3 works)