Philosophy 290-6

We’ll look at some new puzzles about the interaction of modality with quantification and description, using them as excuses to learn about the following topics: quantification, description, reference, counterfactual modalities, the language of knowledge, logical consequence, the semantics-pragmatics boundary, and debates about the broad shape of an adequate theory of meaning for natural language—in particular, the issue of whether it takes a dynamic form. We’ll also make contact in important ways with a question of particular interest to a number of philosophical projects, namely, the question how certain fragments of talk can fail to be fully factual.