Modality, rationalism, and conditionals

This thesis consists of three interconnected papers on apriority, modality, and conditionals. In "Playground Conditionals," I look at three philosophical debates, each of which turns on the epistemic status of a certain kind of conditional-what I call a playground conditional. I argue that a close consideration of playground conditionals gives us a better appreciation of what we can do with conditionals and, ultimately, some guidance concerning what to say about the three philosophical debates. In "Modal Rationalism, Two Dimensionalism, and our Counteractual Sisters", I consider the prospects for modal rationalism in the wake of Kripke's Naming and Necessity. Recently there has been a modal rationalist revival, thanks in part to the development of the "two-dimensional" semantic framework. This framework associates two intensions (a primary intension and a secondary intension) with every sentence. The difficulty comes in finding a definition of primary and secondary intension that would lend the desired support to modal rationalism. After exploring and rejecting some of the proposed definitions in the literature, I sketch an account that can, I think, offer some support to a suitably framed modal rationalism.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Decker, Jason (Jason Andrew)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stephen Yablo.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39344

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39344