Skip to main content

School of Philosophy

  • Home
  • People
  • Events
    • Event series
    • Conferences
      • Past conferences
    • Past events
  • News
    • Audio/Video Recordings
  • Research
  • Study with us
    • Prizes and scholarships
  • Visit us
  • Contact us

Centres & Projects

  • Centre for Consciousness
  • Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory
  • Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences
  • Humanising Machine Intelligence

Related Sites

  • Research School of Social Sciences
  • ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences

Centre for Consciousness

Related Sites

Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory

Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences

School of Philosophy

Administrator

Breadcrumb

HomeUpcoming EventsClare Due (Pre Submission): Two Dilemmas For Linguistic Modal Conventionalism
Clare Due (Pre Submission): Two Dilemmas for Linguistic Modal Conventionalism

Linguistic modal conventionalism says that modal truth depends on conventional rules governing the use of language. Historically, this theory has its roots in the positivist position that necessity is equivalent to analyticity. Its recent proponents have focused on defending it from Quinean objections to analyticity and Kripkean objections based on the existence of synthetic necessary truths. I argue that linguistic modal conventionalism must also deal with a dilemma that arises in its treatment of both de dicto and de re modal truths. On the one hand, if modal sentence truth is treated as conventional but modal properties and modal propositions are accepted as non-conventional, the theory’s commitments are too weak to be of interest. On the other hand, if modal properties and modal propositions are treated as conventional, the theory risks becoming committed to conventionalism about objects and non-modal truth.

Date & time

  • Tue 17 Oct 2017, 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm

Location

Coombs Seminar Room A