The Journal of Philosophy

We often claim to know what might be—or probably is—the case. Modal knowledge along these lines creates a puzzle for information-sensitive semantics for epistemic modals. This paper develops a solution. We start with the idea that knowledge requires safe belief: a belief amounts to knowledge only if it could not easily have been held falsely. We then develop an interpretation of the modal operator in safety (could have) that allows it to non-trivially embed information-sensitive contents. The resulting theory avoids various paradoxes that arise from other accounts of modal knowledge. It also delivers plausible predictions about modal Gettier cases.

When it comes to empty names, we seem to have reached very little consensus. Still, we all seem to agree, first, that our semantics should assign truth to (one reading of) negative singular existence statements in which an empty name occurs and, second, that names are used in such statements. The purpose of this paper is to show that ruling out that the names are mentioned is harder than it has been thought. I will present a new metalinguistic account for negative singular existence statements in which an empty name occurs, and I will show that the account can deal both with the objections to the traditional metalinguistic account and with other objections that seem to target my new proposal.