Modalization and demodalization

On the phenomenology of negation

Bibliographic Data

ID14949481
AuthorsKyle Banick (0000-0002-6599-6932, Philosophy Department California State University Long Beach California USA, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume33
Issue2
Pages613-628
Publication date2025-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0966-8373 • E-ISSN: 1468-0378
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ejop.12983
OpenAlexW4400335920
LanguageEN
References cited39

Negation is widely thought to be uniquely captured by the usual extensional Boolean connective in the setting of classical logic. However, there has been recent interest in a modal approach to negation. This essay examines the problem of modal negation with an Husserlian phenomenological lens. I argue that the Husserlian approach to negation contains an ambiguity which points to a pluralism about negation. On this view, negation begins its life as a modal notion with nonclassical properties, and the question of classical negation is a question of its demodalization. I reconstruct a phenomenological legitimation of the demodalization, but I remain skeptical about its wider prospects. Nevertheless, the phenomenological‐modal approach to negation answers the skepticism about the very possibility of debates about negation and gives valuable insight into the fundamental nature of the problem. The argument should be of interest both to those who are specifically interested in Husserl's logic and the relationship of phenomenology to intuitionistic (and other nonclassical) logics, as well as to philosophers of logic more generally interested in obtaining different angles on the problem of negation from a systematic perspective

Cognitive science · Epistemology · Linguistics · Negation · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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