Please join us this Friday for a talk by John MacKay, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin.

Speaker: John MacKay (U. of Madison, Philosophy)
Title: Explaining the Actuality Operator Away
Date: Friday, May 29
Time: 12:30 am – 2:20 pm
Location: Rosenwald 208

Abstract:

I argue that “actually” does not have a reading in English where it is synonymous with the actuality operator of modal logic, and offer an alternative account of the term. After reviewing the reasons why actuality operators were introduced into formal languages, I argue that the interaction of “actually” with modality and tense reveals that it is not interpreted as such an operator. I advance an alternative account of “actually” and “actual” according to which they are presupposition triggers, along the lines of “even” or “too”. The presupposition they trigger has to do with the discourse evolving in non-standard fashion, with multiple information states being live candidates to be the context set.