Order:
  1. Weak and Strong Necessity Modals: On Linguistic Means of Expressing "A Primitive Concept OUGHT".Alex Silk - 2021 - In Billy Dunaway & David Plunkett (eds.), Meaning, Decision, and Norms: Themes From the Work of Allan Gibbard. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Maize Books. pp. 203-245.
    This paper develops an account of the meaning of `ought', and the distinction between weak necessity modals (`ought', `should') and strong necessity modals (`must', `have to'). I argue that there is nothing specially ``strong'' about strong necessity modals per se: uses of `Must p' predicate the (deontic/epistemic/etc.) necessity of the prejacent p of the actual world (evaluation world). The apparent ``weakness'' of weak necessity modals derives from their bracketing whether the necessity of the prejacent is verified in the actual world. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  2. Evaluational adjectives.Alex Silk - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (1):1-35.
    This paper demarcates a theoretically interesting class of "evaluational adjectives." This class includes predicates expressing various kinds of normative and epistemic evaluation, such as predicates of personal taste, aesthetic adjectives, moral adjectives, and epistemic adjectives, among others. Evaluational adjectives are distinguished, empirically, in exhibiting phenomena such as discourse-oriented use, felicitous embedding under the attitude verb `find', and sorites-susceptibility in the comparative form. A unified degree-based semantics is developed: What distinguishes evaluational adjectives, semantically, is that they denote context-dependent measure functions ("evaluational (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  3. What normative terms mean and why it matters for ethical theory.Alex Silk - 2015 - In Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 5. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 296–325.
    This paper investigates how inquiry into normative language can improve substantive normative theorizing. First I examine two dimensions along which normative language differs: “strength” and “subjectivity.” Next I show how greater sensitivity to these features of the meaning and use of normative language can illuminate debates about three issues in ethics: the coherence of moral dilemmas, the possibility of supererogatory acts, and the connection between making a normative judgment and being motivated to act accordingly. The paper concludes with several brief (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  4.  87
    Metaethical Contextualism.Alex Silk - 2018 - In Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics. New York: Routledge. pp. 102-118.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  5. Hybrid Theories: Cognitive Expressivism.Alex Silk - forthcoming - In David Copp & Connie Rosati (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaethics. Oxford University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Comparative Vagueness.Alex Silk - manuscript
    This paper provides new examples of vagueness phenomena with comparatives. I show that comparatives of the form ‘x is ADJ-er than y’ can be vague due to a fuzziness in how much of some property makes for a difference in ADJ-ness. The sorites examples I provide cannot be assimilated to cases of indiscriminability or fuzziness in relevant dimensions, standards, or measurement procedures. A revised degree-based semantics with semiorders, a well studied threshold structure, is developed. The treatment of equatives captures the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. Normativity in Language and Law.Alex Silk - 2019 - In Toh Kevin, Plunkett David & Shapiro Scott (eds.), Dimensions of Normativity: New Essays on Metaethics and Jurisprudence. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 287-313.
    This chapter develops an account of the meaning and use of various types of legal claims, and uses this account to inform debates about the nature and normativity of law. The account draws on a general framework for implementing a contextualist theory, called 'Discourse Contextualism' (Silk 2016). The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the apparent normativity of claims of law from a particular contextualist interpretation of a standard semantics for modals, along with general principles of interpretation and conversation. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  8. Expectation Biases and Context Management with Negative Polar Questions.Alex Silk - 2020 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 49 (1):51-92.
    This paper examines distinctive discourse properties of preposed negative 'yes/no' questions (NPQs), such as 'Isn’t Jane coming too?'. Unlike with other 'yes/no' questions, using an NPQ '∼p?' invariably conveys a bias toward a particular answer, where the polarity of the bias is opposite of the polarity of the question: using the negative question '∼p?' invariably expresses that the speaker previously expected the positive answer p to be correct. A prominent approach—what I call the context-management approach, developed most extensively by Romero (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  9. Commitment and states of mind with mood and modality.Alex Silk - 2018 - Natural Language Semantics 26 (2):125-166.
    This paper develops an account of mood selection with attitude predicates in French. I start by examining the “contextual commitment” account of mood developed by Portner and Rubinstein Proceedings of SALT 22, CLC Publications, Ithaca, NY, pp 461–487, 2012). A key innovation of Portner and Rubinstein’s account is to treat mood selection as fundamentally depending on a relation between individuals’ attitudes and the predicate’s modal backgrounds. I raise challenges for P&R’s qualitative analysis of contextual commitment and explanations of mood selection. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  10. Nietzsche and contemporary metaethics.Alex Silk - 2018 - In Paul Katsafanas (ed.), Routledge Philosophical Minds: The Nietzschean Mind. Routledge.
    Recent decades have witnessed a flurry of interest in Nietzsche's metaethics — his views, if any, on metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological issues about normativity and normative language and judgment. Various authors have highlighted a tension between Nietzsche's metaethical views about value and his ardent endorsement of a particular evaluative perspective: Although Nietzsche makes apparently "antirealist" claims to the effect that there are no evaluative facts, he vehemently engages in evaluative discourse and enjoins the "free spirits" to create values. Nearly (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  11. Update semantics for weak necessity modals.Alex Silk - 2016 - In Olivier Roy, Allard Tamminga & Malte Willer (eds.), Deontic Logic and Normative Systems. London, UK: College Publications. pp. 237-256.
    This paper develops an update semantics for weak necessity modals like ‘ought’ and ‘should’. I start with the basic approach to the weak/strong necessity modal distinction developed in Silk 2018: Strong necessity modals are given their familiar semantics of necessity, predicating the necessity of the prejacent of the actual world (evaluation world). The apparent “weakness” of weak necessity modals derives from their bracketing the assumption that the relevant worlds in which the prejacent is necessary (deontically, epistemically, etc.) need be candidates (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Theories of vagueness and theories of law.Alex Silk - 2019 - Legal Theory 25 (2):132-152.
    It is common to think that what theory of linguistic vagueness is correct has implications for debates in philosophy of law. I disagree. I argue that the implications of particular theories of vagueness on substantive issues of legal theory and practice are less far-reaching than often thought. I focus on four putative implications discussed in the literature concerning (i) the value of vagueness in the law, (ii) the possibility and value of legal indeterminacy, (iii) the possibility of the rule of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13. Having it Both Ways: Hybrid Theories and Modern Metaethics.Alex Silk - 2017 - Analysis 77 (1):197-211.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. Challenges for independence-driven and context-repair responses to the proviso problem.Alex Silk - 2022 - Natural Language Semantics 30 (3):363-377.
    This note presents challenge cases for prominent pragmatic responses to the proviso problem. I offer examples of uses of conditionals _if_ \(\psi,\,\phi_{P}\) that seem to commit the speaker unconditionally to the presupposition _P_ of the consequent clause _ϕ_, even though the sentence’s predicted semantic presupposition _ψ_⊃_P_ is antecedently satisfied (contrary to context-repair accounts), and independence between _ψ_ and _P_ isn’t antecedently assumed (contrary to independence-driven accounts). The examples provided avoid problems with other examples from the literature used against pragmatic accounts. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Review of Paul Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism. [REVIEW]Alex Silk - 2013 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 10.
    Review of Paul Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark