Modality, expected utility, and hypothesis testing
Woojin Chung, Salvador Mascarenhas
June 2023
 

We introduce an expected value theory of linguistic modality that makes reference to expected utility and a likelihood-based confirmation measure for deontics and epistemics, respectively. The account is a probabilistic semantics for deontics and epistemics, yet it proposes that deontics and epistemics share a common core modal semantics, as in traditional possible-worlds analysis of modality. We argue that this account is not only theoretically advantageous, but also has far-reaching empirical consequences. In particular, we predict modal versions of reasoning fallacies from the heuristics and biases literature. Additionally, we derive the modal semantics in an entirely transparent manner, as it is based on the compositional semantics of Korean modal expressions that are morphosyntactically decomposed into a conditional and an evaluative predicate.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/005625
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Synthese
keywords: modality, bayesian confirmation theory, the conjunction fallacy, decision theory, semantics
previous versions: v4 [May 2023]
v3 [September 2022]
v2 [September 2021]
v1 [December 2020]
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