Quantification and epistemic modality
Dilip Nina
(Tufts)

I present a puzzle concerning the interaction of epistemic modals, singular terms, and quantifiers. The puzzle poses a prima facie problem for standard static theories of epistemic modals. And although standard dynamic theories appear to offer a solution to the puzzle, it turns out that the puzzle poses a problem for these theories as well. The trouble arises from the fact that neither theory takes into account a feature of the phenomena that the puzzle reveals, namely that being possibly thus-and-so (in the epistemic sense of “possibly”) is not an objective trait of an object, but, rather, a trait that an object has only relative to a “way of thinking” of it (cf. Quine, Aloni). I then consider how this insight might be implemented by both static and dynamic semantics.