Just another quick thought, this one about a different (though related) paper by von Fintel and Gillies ("CIA Leaks" - ms). In this paper they propose a supposedly natural conversation in which a might-claim proves resistant to retraction. Just a brief note about background: relativists like John MacFarlane use retraction data as evidence that what is being denied when one responds to an epistemic modal claim is not the embedded proposition (sometimes called the prejacent) but rather the entire proposition itself.
Here's an example from MacFarlane:
A: Joe might be in Boston
B: No, he can't be in Boston. I just saw him an hour ago in Berkeley.
A: Oh OK, I guess I was wrong.
What A admits to being wrong about is not the claim that Joe is in Boston (the embedded proposition) but rather the claim that Joe might be in Boston. Consider the weirdness of the following conversation:
A: Joe might be in Boston.
B: No, he can't be in Boston. I just saw him an hour ago in Berkeley.
A: ??Ok, but I stand by what I said earlier - he might be in Boston.
von Fintel and Gillies hold that cases like the one above are not universal, and propose a case where they claim it is natural for A to not retract her original statement:
A: The keys might be in the drawer.
B: (Looking in the drawer and finding nothing) They're not. Why did you say that?
A: I didn't say that they were in the drawer, only that they might be there, and they might have been.
Is this really a case in which A doesn't retract her original might-claim? Here's a reason why not. Might have-claims are ambiguous in a way that might-claims are not. Consider the following minimal pairs:
(1) ??John might come to the party, although he won't
(2) John might have come to the party, although he didn't
There is no reading on which (1) comes out acceptable (what explains this clash, we leave for another day). However, there seems to be two readings for (2), one of which is preferred given the second conjunct. This non-epistemic reading of 'might have' renders (2) equivalent to,
(3) Although John didn't come to the party, he could have come
Where a particularly salient reading of 'could have' here is that it was within John's power to come to the party.
Anyway, my point is this. von Fintel and Gillies make an error thinking that their example conversation counts as evidence that one can resist retracting might-claims when presented with evidence to the contrary. What really seems to be going on is that what A does is retreat to a non-epistemic might have claim which is really consistent with what B says, even though the original (epistemic) might-claim is not. At the very least, their example allows this possibility and thus in the absence of some evidence that such a reading is not available in this situation, their case is not clearly an example that might-claims are resistant to retraction.
16 years ago
3 comments:
"What really seems to be going on is that what A does is retreat to a non-epistemic might have claim which is really consistent with what B says, even though the original (epistemic) might-claim is not."
This is exactly how I see it, too. In the cases where someone supposedly resists retraction, it seems like they actually do retract their claim - and retreat to the might have claim. It seems to be a matter of whether B has the evidence before the original might-claim is made. (Hmm ... would it make sense for A in the original situation you presented to respond, "Well fine, but Joe might have been Boston!"? Or in the key example, for B to say, "No, I already checked; they aren't there," and still have A respond in the same way?) Anyway, I agree that the might-claim and the might-have-claim are different propositions.
All of the above having been reasoned entirely without formal logic training, haha. I won't pretend to know how to formally make these arguments. They just interest me.
Thanks for your comments - I'm glad we agree! Also, I appreciate you taking some time to read and think about this post.
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