The Psychological & Linguistic Representation of Modality
Jonathan Phillips (Harvard University, Dartmouth College)

February 22, 2019, 11:00am - 1:00pm
Department of Philosophy, University College London

Room G17 (ground floor), Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS)
South Wing, UCL, Gower Street WC1E6BT
United Kingdom

This will be an accessible event, including organized related activities

Sponsor(s):

  • UCL Institute of Advanced Studies
  • The Leverhulme Trust

Organisers:

University College London
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Details

Bio: Jonathan's research falls in the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and linguistics, and fits most easily within the broader umbrella of cognitive science. Much of the work he has done is related in one way or another to the psychological representation of modality — the way our minds represent possibilities. He has also done research on theory of mind, causal reasoning, moral judgment, formal semantics, and happiness. 

Abstract of the talk: This talk presents a new approach to connecting the growing body of work on the psychological representation of modality (the way humans construct and reason over sets of non-actual events) to work in linguistics/philosophy on the semantics of modals. The general capacity for modal cognitionplays a critical role in a wide diversity of high-level cognition, e.g., causal reasoning, moral judgment, theory of mind, decision making, and so on. Critically, humans are able to engage in much of this high-level cognition quickly and effortlessly. I'll provide empirical evidence that these aspects of human cognition are drawing on general-purpose, default representations of what is possible in a given context. Importantly, this research also provides clear evidence that the set of events represented by default is highly constrained by both descriptive and prescriptive normality. After reviewing this work, I'll take up the question of how we might connect this picture of modality at a psychological level to the semantics we give for modals in natural language. I'll sketch a general approach from joint work with Angelika Kratzer and then end with a few new studies that provide provocative evidence thatthe domain of quantification even for epistemic modals is implicitly constrained by what we take to be the normal course of events rather than what is known or what is probable. 

Everyone is most welcome.

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