Open Questions and Epistemic Necessity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4351669 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Brett Sherman (0000-0001-6697-4009, University of South Carolina, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 68 |
| Issue | 273 |
| Pages | 819-840 |
| Publication date | 2018-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/pq/pqy025 |
| OpenAlex | W2884326333 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 34 |
Why can I not appropriately utter ‘It must be raining’ while standing outside in the rain, even though every world consistent with my knowledge is one in which it is raining? The common response to this problem is to hold that epistemic must, in addition to quantifying over epistemic possibilities, carries some additional evidential information concerning the source of one'S evidence. I argue that this is a mistake: epistemic modals are mere quantifiers over epistemic possibilities. My central claim is that the seeming anomaly of the data above arises from a mistaken conception of what a possibility is. Instead of conceiving of possibilities as possible worlds, I argue that we should conceive of possibilities as answers to open questions.
Epistemology · Mistake · Philosophy of science · Political science · Possible world · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science
Context
A Theory of Truthmaker Content I
Nonfactualism about Epistemic Modality
Epistemic Modals
A Theory of Truthmaker Content II
Counterfactuals Without Possible Worlds
Logic and time
Past, Present and Future
At-issue Proposals and Appositive Impositions in Discourse
On Reacting to Assertions and Polar Questions
A Cross-Linguistic Survey of the Grammaticization of Evidentiality
Indeterminist time and truth‐value gaps 1
Probability and implicatures
On the semantics and pragmatics of epistemic vocabulary
Must φ is felicitous only if φ is not known
Contrast and the structure of discourse
Neg-raising and positive polarity
Varieties of update
Information structure in discourse
A unified analysis of the future as epistemic modality
Dynamics of Epistemic Modality
Modality in Language
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2023 (3) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |