On Necessity and Comparison

Abstract

Abstract The ability to compare possibilities and designate some as ‘better’ than others is a fundamental aspect of our use of modals and propositional attitude verbs. This article aims to support a proposal bySloman (1970) that certain modal expressions, in particular,ought, in fact have a more pronounced comparative backbone than others (e.g.must). The connection between ‘ought’ and ‘better’ is supported by linguistic data (some of it, on the lack of direct translations of weak necessity crosslinguistically, is new) and a proposal is advanced for modeling ideals in a way that makes room for non‐comparative, strong, priority‐type necessity.

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