Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

The main aim of the talk is to examine the prospects for contextualist and relativist semantics of epistemic modal claims, in particular, with regard to their capacity to modal disagreement and to explain the possibility of rejection, retraction, entrenchment, and substantial debate. 

It is argued that John MacFarlane’s truth-relativist account of epistemic modal claims is not superior to certain contextualist theories. His individualistic approach, according to which the truth-value of an epistemic modal claim depends solely on the epistemic state of the individual assessor, runs into problems that social and nonindexical contextualist accounts seem to be able to avoid.