Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Modal Sentences and Truncated Counterfactual Conditionals

Let's think about the following modal sentence:

1. My expository skills could be better than they are.

(1)  is a modal sentence because of the presence in it of the modal word 'could.'  Whether or not you agree with me that (1) is true, you must concede that (1) has a definite meaning understandable by any competent speaker of the English language.  (1) is a bit of ordinary, grammatically correct English: there is nothing extraordinary or 'philosophical' about it.  Not only does (1) have a definite meaning, it has exactly one definite meaning: no question of ambiguity arises.  One cannot say that (1) is meaningless or incoherent or ambiguous.  Compare (1) with the nonmodal

2. My expository skills are better than they are.

(2) is plainly incoherent for reasons that need no belaboring.  And anyone who understands English will instantly discern the difference between (2) and (1).

Now the question is whether sentences like (1) are truncated counterfactual conditionals.  Of course, there is nothing conditional about (1) as it stands:  it is a categorical sentence.  It says straight out that my expository skills have a certain property, the property of being possibly such as to be better than they actually are.  But one might argue that (1) is really a counterfactual conditional in disguise, or that it is elliptical for some counterfactual conditional or other, or that it needs completion, or that it needs to be set in a wider context to be intelligible.   Now I do not deny that there are counterfactuals in the vicinity into which (1), suitably modified, can be embedded.  Here are a couple:

3. Were my expository skills better than they are, I would have convinced Dave by now.

4. Had it not been for a misspent youth, my expository skills would be better than they are.

Consider (4) in its relation to (1).  Were I to assert (1), a member of my audience could ask:  what would have had to have been the case for you to have better expository skills than you in fact have? In reply, I could say: "I 'devoted' too much time to sex, drugs, and Rock & Roll, and not enough to my studies.  Had it not been for a  youth wasted on sex, drugs, and Rock & Roll, , my expository skills would be better than they are." (Memo to the curious: I am not revealing any biographical details here; these are just examples rigged to make a philosophical point.)

I do not deny that (1) can be expanded into some such counterfactual as (4).  (You will notice, however, when (1) is placed in the context of (4), the 'could' gives way to 'would.') But the question is whether modals like (1) MUST be expanded into counterfactual conditionals like (4).  This is what I deny.  (1) is perfectly intelligible by itself: it can be, but need not be, embedded in a wider counterfactual context.  What does (1) say when construed as a semantic stand-alone (as opposed to a sentence that needs to be embedded in a wider context to be intelligible)?  It says that it is broadly-logically possible that my expository skills be better than they are.  That is not only perfectly intelligible, but also true.

To see the point more clearly, consider a modal sentence that cannot be embedded in a wider context given certain assumptions to be spelled out:

5.  The physical universe could have not existed.

Let's assume that reality is exhausted by the physical universe: all there is is the physical universe and what it contains.  If so, then there is no wider counterfactual context into which to embed (5).  We could not then say, for example,

6. Had God not created the physical universe, then it would not have existed.

Assuming that all that exists is the physical universe, that there is nothing outside it that could in any way cause or condition it, the assertion of its modal contingency — which is what (5) asserts — cannot be embedded in any wider context.  And yet (5) is perfectly intelligible.  It says that the physical universe does not exist of broadly-logical necessity, but is broadly-logically contingent: it exists, but it is possibly nonexistent.

Now either you understand the last sentence or you do not.  If you do not, then I pronounce you modally blind, and the discussion ends.

 

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Bill Vallicella

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5 responses to “Modal Sentences and Truncated Counterfactual Conditionals”

  1. David Brightly Avatar
    David Brightly

    Bill,
    “1. My expository skills could be better than they are.
    Not only does (1) have a definite meaning, it has exactly one definite meaning: no question of ambiguity arises. ”
    A speaker of British English might take (1) to mean ‘[If I practise my writing more then] in a years time my expository skills might be better than they are now.’ It’s an expression of hope for the future. As such, is this a modal construction? It seems to express something about how this world will turn out, not about some alternative world.

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  2. peterlupu Avatar
    peterlupu

    DavidB,
    “A speaker of British English might take (1) to mean ‘[If I practise my writing more then] in a years time my expository skills might be better than they are now.’”
    Why would anyone take (1) to mean an expression of hope for the future? If a speaker would have wanted to say something about his hopes then he could have said instead of (1):
    2) I hope that my expository skills will be better (perhaps after some practice).
    A speaker could assert (1)on his death bed, lamenting all his life the fact that his expository skills were not up to the standards he wished them to be. Surely, asserting (1) under these conditions cannot be indicating hope that they will be better.
    A speaker who asserts (1) clearly intends to say two things both of which have nothing to do with hope. First, the speaker of (1) presupposes that his expository skills currently are not up to a certain desired level; and, second, that his expository skills could have been closer to a desired level.
    Neither of these includes an expression of hope.
    Of course, I can envision a context in which (1) is asserted, it means roughly what I said it means, and it is accompanied with hope. For instance, someone is taking seven hours of intensive writing classes a day. A friend asks: “Why are you killing yourself taking all of these writing classes?”. The speaker then responds: “My expository skills could be better than they are. I really want to improve them. So I am taking all of these classes *hoping* that taking them will improve my expository skills significantly.”
    What do we have here in this exchange? The speaker thinks that while his expository skills are not what they should be, they could be and that he has the ability to improve them by taking the classes and he hopes they will be.
    peter

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  3. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    Gentlemen,
    Thanks for the comments. I confidently asserted that (1) has exactly one meaning, a modal meaning: in the actual world @, now, my expository skills are at some level L; but there is a possible world W accessible to @ in which I now have skills at level L*> L.
    David is suggesting that (1) could be construed as expressing a temporal proposition. But note that he shifted from ‘could’ to ‘might.’ Without this shift, it looks as if he is referring us to a future possibility, the possibility that in the future my writing skills be better than what they actually are now. If so, then (1) remains modal but is ambiguous as between a present modal and a future modal meaning.
    So although what Peter says in response to David is formidable, David may be right that (1) is open to multiple interpretations.
    But all of this is beside the main point, which is that there are unrealized possibilities. That is what I want to convince David of. David has shown by his ‘modal map’ in an earlier thread that he understands perfectly the way the modal concepts interrelate. He understands the logic of these concepts. What I think he doubts is that there is anything in the world that corresponds to, or falls under, these concepts.
    So David, is that your difficulty? You understand the non-epistemic concept ‘unrealized possibility’ but you doubt, or perhaps even deny, that there are any unrealized possibilities.

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  4. David Brightly Avatar
    David Brightly

    Thanks, Bill, for that generous interpretation of my comment. That your (1) had another interpretation was indeed my (beside the) point. I switched to ‘might’ because I wanted to express a present epistemic uncertainty about the future rather than a future state of possibility.
    I’m unsure about unrealised possibilities as yet, though, as you guessed, tending towards the sceptical. What I’ve been concerned to do in recent comments is make a case that certain concepts, eg, ‘validity of argument form’ (http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/02/validity-as-a-modal-concept-and-a-modal-argument-for-the-nonexistence-of-god.html?cid=6a010535ce1cf6970c01116886bf13970c#comment-6a010535ce1cf6970c01116886bf13970c) and ‘consistency with the laws of physics’ (http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/02/volition-and-modality-peter-lupu.html?cid=6a010535ce1cf6970c011168ae90f4970c#comment-6a010535ce1cf6970c011168ae90f4970c) are understandable without resort to modality. If you or Peter can find a concept that I can’t ‘demodalise’ I’ll be persuaded.
    PS. Could we have HTML formatting in the comments box back, please?

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  5. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    David,
    I think I need to switch back to Typepad Identification to restore HTML formatting, but I will have to do that anyway since spammers have been trying to break in. The downside is that it makes it more difficult for legitimate commenters to enter the Comments Area.

    Reply

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