1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910984502403321

Autore

Utz Konrad

Titolo

Modal Pragmatics / Konrad Utz

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Paderborn, : Brill | mentis, 2024

ISBN

9783969753316

9783957433312

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (121 pages)

Collana

Schöningh, Fink and mentis Religious Studies, Theology and Philosophy E-Books Online, Collection 2025

Disciplina

111

Soggetti

Formal necessity

material necessity

conditioned necessity

necessity de re

time

essentialism

facticity

happenstance

ordinary language

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references.

Nota di contenuto

Front Matter -- Preliminary Material / Konrad Utz -- 1. Formal Necessity / Konrad Utz -- 2. Material Necessity / Konrad Utz -- On the Philosophical Significance of Modal Pragmatics / Konrad Utz -- Back Matter -- Bibliography / Konrad Utz.

Sommario/riassunto

Modal Pragmatics analyzes and systematizes differences among our uses of modal expressions in ordinary language which have not been adequately explained elsewhere.  We say such things as: “By necessity, John Tylor was not Jewish; no US-president ever was”; “The rooks cannot move diagonally”; “It is still possible for you to catch the train”; “I am necessarily only in one place at a time”; “Peter will inevitably die; there is no antidote to the venom of the snake that bit him”. These differences are not sufficiently explained by distinctions between different types of modalities like alethic and deontic, or by different



bases of evaluation like the speaker’s knowledge or an object’s history. They can, however, be clarified and more systematically defined by establishing a new field of modal differentiation, which we may call “modal pragmatics”. Apart from analyzing ordinary language, this may be helpful in formulating ontological theses.