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This paper motivates and develops a novel semantic framework fordeontic modals. The framework is designed to shed light on two things: the relationship betweendeontic modals and substantive theories of practical rationality and the interaction ofdeontic modals with conditionals, epistemic modals and probability operators. I argue that, in order to model inferential connections betweendeontic modals and probability operators, we need more structure than is provided by classical intensional theories. In particular, we need probabilistic (...) structure that interacts directly with the compositional semantics ofdeontic modals. However, I reject theories that provide this probabilistic structure by claiming that the semantics ofdeontic modals is linked to the Bayesian notion of expectation. I offer a probabilistic premise semantics that explains all the data that create trouble for the rival theories. (shrink)

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This chapter provides a selective survey of prominent theories of the semantics ofdeontic modals in logic and natural language. We focus on Kratzer’s (1977; 1981; 1991) semantics and extensions to this analysis. Kratzer’s semantics has been far and away the most influential theory ofdeontic modals, which provide a base case for the interpretation of normative language in general. Understanding the logic and truth-conditions of normative language is one of the core areas of metaethics. It informs our (...) understanding of normative arguments and normative reasoning. As this chapter will emphasize, some forms of normative language don’t allow for the inferences that classical logic trains philosophers to expect. Understanding what inferences are valid for normative language should impact our under-standing of how we reason, and should reason, about the normative. We will first look at howdeontic modals are understood in the context ofmodal logic and natural language. Then we’ll survey some recent debates and discoveries in the literature ondeontic modals in natural language. We close with some considerations about the relevance of natural language to metaethics. (shrink)

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An extraordinary amount of recent work by philosophers of language, meta-ethicists, and semanticists has focused on the meaning and function of language expressing concepts having to do with what is allowed, forbidden, required, or obligatory, in view of the requirements of morality, the law, one's preferences or goals, or what an authority has commanded: in short,deontic modality. This volume presents new work on the much-discussed topic ofdeontic modality by leading figures in the philosophy of language, meta-ethics, (...) and linguistic semantics. The papers tackle issues about the place of decision and probability theory in the semantics ofdeontic modality, the viability of standard possible worlds treatments of the truth conditions ofdeonticmodal sentences, the possibility of dynamic semantic treatments ofdeontic modality, the methodology of semantics fordeontic modals, and the prospects for representationalist, expressivist, and inferentialist treatments ofdeontic modality. (shrink)

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According to a recent challenge to Kratzer's canonical contextualist semantics fordeonticmodal expressions, no contextualist view can make sense of cases in which such amodal must be information-sensitive in some way. Here I show how Kratzer's semantics is compatible with readings of the targeted sentences that fit with the data. I then outline a general account of how contexts select parameter values formodal expressions and show, in terms of that account, how the needed, (...) contextualist-friendly readings might plausibly get selected in the challenge cases. (shrink)

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Over the last fifteen years, linguists and philosophers of language have reexamined the canonical, Kratzerian semantics formodal expressions, with special attention paid to their epistemic anddeontic uses. This article is an overview of the literature ondeonticmodal expressions. Section 1 provides an overview of the canonical semantics, noting some of its main advantages. Section 2 introduces a set of desiderata that have achieved the status of fixed points in the debates about whether the (...) canonical semantics is correct. These include the observations thatdeonticmodal sentences have both deliberative and evaluative readings and both information-sensitive and -insensitive readings. Adequate resolutions of certain puzzles indeontic logic and resolving the Frege-Geach problem for Expressivism have also achieved this status. The third section provides an opinionated overview of some of the main extant rivals to the canonical semantics, including Cariani, Kaufmann, and Kaufmann’s (2013) complex contextualism , Yalcin’s (2012) Expressivism, Willer’s (2014) dynamic semantics, and Starr’s (2016) dynamic Expressivism. Section 4 provides an assessment of each of the views discussed in terms of the desiderata introduced in section 2. Section 5 is an overview of remaining issues that require more attention in the literature. (shrink)

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Standarddeontic logic (SDL) is defined on the basis of possible world semantics and is a logic of alethic-deontic modalities rather thandeontic modalities alone. The interpretation of the concepts of obligation and permission comes down exclusively to the logical value that a sentence adopts for the accessibledeontic alternatives. Here, we set forth a different approach, this being a logic which additionally takes into consideration whether sentences stand in relation to the normative system or to (...) the system of values under which we predicate thedeontic qualifications. By taking this aspect into account, we arrive at a logical system which preserves laws proper to adeontic logic but where the standard paradoxes ofdeontic logic do not arise. It is a logic of strictly-deontic modalities DR. (shrink)

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The present dissertation investigates certain facets of the logical structure of oughts – where “ought” is used as a noun, roughly meaning obligation. I do so by following two lines of inquiry. The first part of the thesis places oughts in the context of practical rationality. The second part of the thesis concerns the inference rules governing arguments about oughts, and specifically the inference rule of Reasoning by Cases. These two lines of inquiry, together, aim to expound upon oughts in (...) rationality and reasoning. The methodology used in this dissertation is the one of philosophical logic, in which logical, qualitative models are developed to support and foster conceptual analysis. The dissertation consists of four main chapters. The first two chapters are devoted to the role of oughts in practical rationality. I focus on the so-called Enkratic principle of rationality, which – in its most general formulation – requires that if an agent believes sincerely and with conviction that she ought to do X, then she intends to X. I develop a logical framework to investigate the (static and dynamic) relation between those oughts believed by the agent and her intentions. It is shown that, under certain minimal assumptions, the Enkratic principle of rationality is a principle of limited validity. The following two chapters of the dissertation constitute a study of the classical inference rule of Reasoning by Cases, which – in its simplest form – moves from the premises “A or B”, “if A then C” and “if B then C” to the conclusion “C”. Recent literature has called the validity of Reasoning by Cases into question, with the most influential counterexample being the so-called Miners’ Puzzle – an instance of Reasoning by Cases where “C” involves oughts. I provide a unifying explanation of why the Miners’ Puzzle emerges. It is shown that, within specific boundaries, Reasoning by Cases is a valid inference rule. (shrink)

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In this paper I argue thatdeontic modals are hyperintensional, i.e. logically equivalent contents cannot be substituted in their scope. I give two arguments, one deductive and the other abductive. First, I show that the contrary thesis leads to falsity; second, I argue that a hyperintensional theory ofdeontic modals fares better than its rivals in terms of elegance, theoretical simplicity and explanatory power. I then propose a philosophical analysis of this thesis and outline some consequences. In Section (...) 1 I introduce and definedeontic modality and hyperintensionality. In Section 2 I give a reductio for the hyperintensionality ofdeontic modals. If the argument is sound, a useful corollary is thatdeontic modals are also non-intensional, and therefore possible-world semantics accounts are illfitted for them. I then show how the main result can be strengthened or weakened by varying the definition of logical validity. In Section 3 I give an abductive argument for the hyperintensionality ofdeontic modals, arguing that with a single move we are able to solve many paradoxes and puzzles traditionally troublingdeontic logic. I present a version of a hyperintensionaldeontic logic in an appendix, which I prove is sound and complete with respect to a version of truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

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This paper argues for contrastivism about thedeontic modals, 'ought', 'must', and 'may'. A simple contrastivist semantics that predicts the desired entailment relations among these modals is offered.

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John Horty has proposed an approach to reasoning with ought-propositions which stands in contrast to the standardmodal approach todeontic logic. Horty’s approach is based on default theories as known from the framework of Default Logic. It is argued that the approach cannot be extended beyond the most simple kinds of default theories and that it fails in particular to account for conditional obligations. The most plausible ways of straightening out the defects of the approach conform to (...) a simple theory of default reasoning in standarddeontic language. (shrink)

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I propose a unified solution to two puzzles: Ross's puzzle and free choice permission. I begin with a pair of cases from the decision theory literature illustrating the phenomenon of act dependence, where what an agent ought to do depends on what she does. The notion of permissibility distilled from these cases forms the basis for my analysis of 'may' and 'ought'. This framework is then combined with a generalization of the classical semantics for disjunction — equivalent to Boolean disjunction (...) on the diagonal, but with a different two-dimensional character — that explains the puzzling facts in terms of semantic consequence. (shrink)

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Introduction to a special issue of PPQ of papers from a conference ondeontic modality held at USC in 2013.

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This is a critical notice of Nate Charlow and Matthew Chrisman's (eds.) edited collection of articles entitledDeontic Modality. It begins from a brief overview of Angelika Kratzer's standard ordering semantic model for understandingdeontic modals such as 'ought', 'must', and 'may' and some of the problems of this model. The focus is then on how many of the articles of this collection reach to these problems by either developing the standard model further or by formulating alternatives to (...) it. This critical notice then focuses on the principles that should govern our theory-choice in formal semantics once all these formal models are developed to deal with many of the problem cases discussed in this excellent collection. (shrink)

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This paper explores the idea that a semantics for ‘ought’ should be neutral between different ways of deciding what an agent ought to do in a situation. While the idea is, I argue, well-motivated, taking it seriously leads to surprising, even paradoxical, problems for theorizing about the meaning of ‘ought’. This paper describes and defends one strategy—a form of Expressivism for themodal ‘ought’—for navigating these problems.

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In this paper I develop a theory of 'function' and function as adeonticmodal word and phenomenon. Kratzer’s account of the semantics for thedeontic modals is invoked and using her approach a formal schema for the semantics of 'function'-sentences is proposed. My account of function is a modalized and extended version of Cummins’ systems-type account of function. In the biological and physical sciences, on this account, function is a complex empiricaldeonticmodal property. (...) It is built on the property of X’s doing Y well enough to enable Z, which is implicitlydeontic because of the evaluative but nonetheless empirical in its biological and physical applications. This account of function resolves many of the traditional puzzles about biological and physical function, and extends naturally to include the other types of function. With a variant treatment of the semantics, this account is argued also to apply to mathematical function, where it is shown to be interestingly related to Frege’s account of function. (shrink)

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I begin by reviewing classical semantics and the problems presented by normative conflicts. After a brief detour through default logic, I establish some connections between the treatment of conflicts in each of these two approaches, classical and default, and then move on to consider some further issues: priorities among norms, or reasons, conditional oughts, and reasons about reasons.

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Philosophical debate about the meaning of normative terms has long been pulled in two directions by the apparently competing ideas: (i) ‘ought’s do not describe what is actually the case but rather prescribe possible action, thought, or feeling, (ii) all declarative sentences deserve the same general semantic treatment, e.g. in terms of compositionally specified truth conditions. In this paper, I pursue resolution of this tension by rehearsing the case for a relatively standard truth-conditionalist semantics for ‘ought’ conceived as a necessity (...)modal and proposing a revision to it motivated by the distinctively prescriptive character of somedeontic modals. In my view, this puts pressure on a popular conception of one of the core debates of metanormative theory between realists and antirealists. To make good on this claim, I go on to explore two very general ways we might interpret the results of compositional semantics—“representationalism” and “inferentialism”—in order to argue that, contrary to what is generally assumed, both can capture the special prescriptivity of ‘ought’ and both can countenance compositionally specified and informative truth-conditions for ought-sentences. Hence, my main thesis is that the deciding factor between them should not be which of ideas (i) and (ii) we are more impressed by but rather what we think of the relative merits of how representationalism and inferentialism respect these ideas. I’m inclined to favor an antirealist form of inferentialism, but the task I’ve set myself here is mainly to articulate the view in the context of metanormative theory and the semantics ofdeontic modals rather than try to defend it fully. To this purpose, towards the end I also briefly compare and contrast inferentialism with a third “ideationalist” metasemantic view, which may be an attractive home for some sophisticated versions of metanormative expressivism. Depending on how expressivism is worked out, it may be completely compatible with and so perhaps usefully combined with inferentialism or it may offer a competing way to respect ideas (i) and (ii). (shrink)

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This paper outlines a semantic account of attitude reports anddeontic modals based on cognitive and illocutionary products, mental states, andmodal products, as opposed to the notion of an abstract proposition or a cognitive act.

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Thedeontic status of tautologies and contradictions is one of the major puzzles for authors of early works ondeontic logic. It is well-known that von Wright addresses this problem by adopting a Principle ofDeontic Contingency, which says that tautologies are not necessarily obligatory and contradictions are not necessarily forbidden. A more radical solution is proposed by Anderson within a reductionist approach todeontic logic and consists in restricting the range of application ofdeontic (...) modalities to contingent propositions. Anderson’s solution has not received much attention in the literature, despite reflecting a typical feature of ordinarydeontic reasoning, where non-contingent propositions are rarely, if ever, taken into account. In the present article we explore some of its formal consequences, providing a taxonomy of the properties of the Andersonian operators of obligation and permission for contingent propositions, O′ and P′, in the class of normal alethic systems. (shrink)

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Traditional approaches indeontic logic have focused on the so-called reportative reading of obligation sentences, by providing truth-functional semantics based on a primitive ideality order between possible worlds. Those approaches, however, do not take into account that, in natural language, obligation sentences primarily carry a prescriptive effect. The paper focuses precisely on that prescriptive character, and shows that the reportative reading can be derived from the prescriptive one. A dynamic, non truth-functional semantics for necessitydeontic modals is developed, (...) in which the ideality relations among possible worlds can be updated. Finally, it is proven that the semantics solves several of the classicdeontic paradoxes. (shrink)

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Deontic necessity modals (e.g. 'have to', 'ought to', 'must', 'need to', 'should', etc.) seem to vary in how they interact with negation. According to some accounts, what forces modals like 'ought' and 'should' to outscope negation is their polarity sensitivity -- modals that scope over negation do so because they are positive polarity items. But there is a conflict between this account and a widely assumed theory of if-clauses, namely the restrictor analysis. In particular, the conflict arises for constructions (...) containing a bound pronoun in the if-clause. This note spells out the core conflict. (shrink)

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A suggestion is made for representing iterateddeontic modalities in stit theory, the “seeing-to-it-that” theory of agency. The formalization is such that normative sentences are represented as agentive sentences and therefore have history dependent truth conditions. In contrast to investigations in alethicmodal logic, in the construction of systems ofdeontic logic little attention has been paid to the iteration... of thedeontic modalities.

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Kolodny and MacFarlane have made a pioneering contribution to our understanding of how the interpretation ofdeontic modals can be sensitive to evidence and information. But integrating the discussion of information-sensitivity into the standard Kratzerian framework for modals suggests ways of capturing the relevant data without treatingdeontic modals as “informational modals” in their sense. I show that though one such way of capturing the data within the standard semantics fails, an alternative does not. Nevertheless I argue that (...) we have good reasons to adopt an information-sensitive semantics of the general type Kolodny and MacFarlane describe. Contrary to the standard semantics, relativedeontic value between possibilities sometimes depends on which possibilities are live. I develop an ordering semantics fordeontic modals that captures this point and addresses various complications introduced by integrating the discussion of information-sensitivity into the standard semantic framework. By attending to these complexities, we can also illuminate various roles that information and evidence play in logical arguments, discourse, and deliberation. (shrink)

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Recent challenges to Kratzer’s canonical contextualist semantics formodal expressions are united by a shared methodological practice: Each requires the assessment of the truth or warrant of a sentence in a scenario. The default evidential status accorded these judgments is a constraining one: It is assumed that, to be plausible, a semantic hypothesis must vindicate the reported judgments. Fully assessing the extent to which these cases do generate data that puts pressure on the canonical semantics, then, requires an understanding (...) of this methodological practice. Here I argue that not all assessments are fit to play this evidential role. To play it, we need reason to think that speakers’ assessments can be reasonably expected to be reliable. Minimally, having such grounds requires that assessments are given against the background of non-defectively characterized points of evaluation. Assessing MacFarlane’s central challenge case to contextualism aboutdeontic modals in light of this constraint shows that his judgments do not have the needed evidential significance. In addition, new experimental data shows that once the needed scenario is characterized non-defectively, none of the resulting range of cases provides data that cannot be accommodated by a Kratzer-style contextualism. (shrink)

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This paper concerns a thorny problem posed by conditional requirements: we expect somemodal conditionals of the form ‘if p, then it must be that p’ to be false, yet they all come out true given two basic assumptions needed to account for ordinary conditional requirement like ‘If the light turns red, then cars must stop’. The first assumption is a semantic expectation linking conditional requirements with absolute ones, the second is the possible-worlds-based definition ofmodal sentences. Keeping (...) the former means giving up the latter, a result with profound implications for Kratzer’s formal semantics, modifications thereof, as well asdeontic logics. (shrink)

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The difficulty to interpret the iteration of modalities, already ontic and still moredeontic, incites to pay attention to the system B of basicmodal logic that John L. Pollock proposed in 1967. The Pollock’s system brought all the theses which, in the classical onticmodal systems, from Sl to S5, contain no iteration of themodal functors. With this basic ontic system we characterize a basicdeontic system, and a basic ontico-deontic system, the (...) former including all the theses of the first two. Each of the three systems is based axiomatically and assorted with a semantics for which the soundness and the completeness hold. (shrink)

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According to one view of alethic modality, alethic modality isdeontic modality with respect to thoughts or language. To say that something is necessary is to prescribe norms on how we must think or use language. This view has been argued to have many philosophical advantages over the traditional view that takes alethic modality to describe things in the world. In this article, I argue that thedeontic view also enjoys a wide range of empirical support from linguistics (...) and psychology. (shrink)

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The contract review process can be a costly and time-consuming task for lawyers and clients alike, requiring significant effort to identify and evaluate the legal implications of individual clauses. To address this challenge, we propose the use of natural language processing techniques, specifically text classification based ondeontic tags, to streamline the process. Our research question is whether natural language processing techniques, specifically dense vector embeddings, can help semi-automate the contract review process and reduce time and costs for legal (...) professionals reviewingdeontic modalities in contracts. In this study, we create a domain-specific dataset and train both baseline and neural network models for contract sentence classification. This approach offers a more efficient and cost-effective solution for contract review, mimicking the work of a lawyer. Our approach achieves an accuracy of 0.90, showcasing its effectiveness in identifying and evaluating individual contract sentences. (shrink)

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The article argues for a parallelism between the interpretation ofdeontic modals and the interpretation of counterfactuals. The main claim is that dependencies between facts play a role in the resolution of both types of modality: in both cases, facts ‘stand and fall’ together. The article provides two types of evidence supporting this claim: (i) evidence that comes from the interaction between primary and secondary duties (as presented in contrary-to-duty imperatives) and (ii) evidence that comes from the possibility of (...) reproducing well-known counterfactual puzzles in the domain ofdeontic statements. The article argues that the semantics ofdeontic modals needs to be stated in a way that pays attention to dependencies between facts and illustrates this with a proposal building on work on counterfactuals by Kratzer and Veltman. (shrink)

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The document titled “14 points of Wilson” was announced by the President of the United States Woodrow Wilson in his speech addressed to the United States Congress on 8th January 1918. The speech is one of the most well known documents of the First World War as it touched upon several world issues. The text has been interpreted ever since in respect to the importance and real meaning of points formulated by Wilson. One of the points referred to Poland. The (...) aim of the paper is to focus on the exponents ofdeontic modality used in that text of historical value and to find the answer to the question concerning thedeontic value of each point. The analysis will encompass the principles ofdeontic logic as well as the meaning ofdeontic modals in legal discourse at the time of speech delivery as those 14 points should be classified as a text belonging to legal genres. The aim of the paper is to present the historical background and the linguistic analysis in order to find out whether historical facts, interpretations and language used correspond with one another. (shrink)

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In the present article we explore the possibilities of applying Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī's (549/1155 - 587/1191) epistemology of presence outside its own historical and systematic context. Indeed, we are convinced that Suhrawardī's ideas on temporality and modality are not only fruitful for analysing the work of his predecessors, but also offer new avenues for an epistemological understanding of logic – that is, a perspective in which logic is conceived as the theory and method of acquiring knowledge through demonstration. As noted (...) in the conclusion, the approach offers a newdeontic logic that can be generalised for ethical and legal contexts beyond Islamic thought. (shrink)

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In this paper, we axiomatize thedeontic logic in Fusco (2015), which uses a Stalnaker-inspired account of diagonal acceptance and a two-dimensional account of disjunction to treat Ross’s Paradox and the Puzzle of Free Choice Permission. On this account, disjunction-involving validities are a priori rather than necessary. We show how to axiomatize two-dimensional disjunction so that the introduction/elimination rules for boolean disjunction can be viewed as one-dimensional projections of more general two-dimensional rules. These completeness results help make explicit the (...) restrictions Fusco’s account must place on free-choice inferences. They are also of independent interest, as they raise difficult questions about how to “lift” a Kripke frame for a one-dimensionalmodal logic into two dimensions. (shrink)

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In this paper, we axiomatize thedeontic logic in Fusco 2015, which uses a Stalnaker-inspired account of diagonal acceptance and a two-dimensional account of disjunction to treat Ross’s Paradox and the Puzzle of Free Choice Permission. On this account, disjunction-involving validities are a priori rather than necessary. We show how to axiomatize two-dimensional disjunction so that the introduction/elimination rules for boolean disjunction can be viewed as one-dimensional projections of more general two-dimensional rules. These completeness results help make explicit the (...) restrictions Fusco’s account must place on free-choice inferences. They are also of independent interest, as they raise difficult questions about how to ‘lift’ a Kripke frame for a one- dimensionalmodal logic into two dimensions. (shrink)

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This chapter contains sections titled:Modal Concepts The Semantics of Modalities and Systems ofModal Logic Modality and QuantificationDeontic, Epistemic, and Temporal Modalities Epistemic LogicDeontic Logic Temporal Frames Conditional Obligations and Rules of Detachment.

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Deontic logic handles not onlydeontic modalities, but also alethic and temporal ones. In addition, individuals like authorities and addressees play an important role. R5-D5 is a system handling alethic,deontic and temporal modalities, whose adequacy has been proved in an earlier paper. Similarly for KD*UXY with sets of individuals . The present article is an attempt to construct a general system mixing R5-D5 and KD*UXY.

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Thedeonticmodal must has two surprising properties: an assertion of must p does not permit a denial of p, and must does not take past tense complements. I first consider an explanation of these phenomena that stays within Angelika Kratzer’s semantic framework for modals, and then offer some reasons for rejecting that explanation. I then propose an alternative account, according to which simple must sentences have the force of an imperative.

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There has been a recent surge of work ondeontic modality within philosophy of language. This work has put thedeontic logic tradition in contact with natural language semantics, resulting in significant increase in sophistication on both ends. This chapter surveys the main motivations, achievements, and prospects of this work.

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Our goal here is to help identify the contextualist’s most worthy competitor to relativism. Recently, some philosophers of language and linguists have argued that, while there are contextualist-friendly semantic theories ofdeontic modals that fit with the relativist’s challenge data, the best such theories are not Lewis-Kratzer-style semantic theories. If correct, this would be important: It would show that the theory that has for many years enjoyed the status of the default view of modals in English and other languages (...) is in need of revision. Here we defend the default view by showing how a Kratzer-style semantics is able to make available readings of the relevant utterances that fit with the pretheoretical judgments opponents purport it cannot fully capture. Having established this, we turn to considering the more theoretical grounds proponents have offered for preferring their rival contextualist views. Here the question is to what extent such grounds favor semantic over what Korta and Perry call “near-side pragmatic” explanations of our judgments. In particular, we argue that our favored readings figure in near-side pragmatic explanations of those judgments that possess the methodological and theoretical advantages of systematicity and unity at least as well as, if not to a greater extent than, those of opponents who argue for their revised semantic theories on the basis of these advantages. (shrink)

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Computational systems are traditionally approached from control-oriented perspectives; however, as soon as we move from centralized to decentralized computational infrastructures, direct control needs to be replaced by distributed coordination mechanisms that are on par with institutional constructs observable in human societies (contracts, agreements, enforcement mechanisms, etc.). This paper presents a formalization of Hohfeld's framework building upon a logic whose language includes primitive operators of ability and parametricdeontic operators. The proposal is meant to highlight the fundamental interaction between (...) class='Hi'>deontic and potestative concepts and contains proofs of soundness and completeness with respect to a class of relational models. (shrink)

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We introduce a type of weightedmodal logic with explicit weights both in the language and in the models. The framework has its applications in epistemic logic for reasoning about agents’ knowledge based on their capability, and indeontic logic for agents’ choices based on theirdeontic capability or utilities. We make use of weighted Kripke models with the weights understood epistemically as a similarity measure between states and deontically as a measure of expected utilities. We present (...) sound and complete axiomatizations for the logics, and discuss variants and possible extensions. (shrink)

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The aim of this paper is to present an explanation for the impact of normative considerations on people’s assessment of certain seemingly purely descriptive matters. The explanation is based on two main claims. First, a large category of expressions are tacitlymodal: they are contextually equivalent tomodal proxies. Second, the interpretation of predominantly circumstantial or teleological modals is subject to certain constraints which make certain possibilities salient at the expense of others.

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A textbook onmodal logic, intended for readers already acquainted with the elements of formal logic, containing nearly 500 exercises. Brian F. Chellas provides a systematic introduction to the principal ideas and results in contemporary treatments of modality, including theorems on completeness and decidability. Illustrative chapters focus ondeontic logic and conditionality. Modality is a rapidly expanding branch of logic, and familiarity with the subject is now regarded as a necessary part of every philosopher's technical equipment. Chellas here (...) offers an up-to-date and reliable guide essential for the student. (shrink)

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