Languages for Possibility

Modal concepts are central to the formulation of many of the classic problems of philosophy, and are therefore regarded as important objects of investigation in their own right. This book approaches them from the viewpoints of modern language and semantic theory. The first part is concerned with issues in philosophical logic motivated by recent work in modal logic. The author discusses the existential commitments of quantification and predication, and the relative primacy of modal operators vis a vis quantifiers over worlds. In the second part, he develops a neo-Fregean approach to semantics in which the references of complete sentences are states of affairs rather than truth-values. This allows modal contexts to be distinguished from propositional attitude contexts, the former being functions of reference (states of affairs and their constituents), the latter functions of senses (thoughts and their constituents). The book attempts to embed an essentially Kripkean account of modality within an overall framework that derives from Frege. It is intended to be of interest to philosophers of language, theoretical linguists and cognitive scientists.