Thesis Summary: Epistemic modality and evidentiality

Katrina Przyjemski
According to orthodox theories of epistemic modality, epistemic necessity and possibility operators like
might and must are universal and existential quantifiers over worlds compatible with a body of evidence
or knowledge. This is a natural and convenient approach to epistemic modality, one that extends the standard
treatment of alethic modal operators into the epistemic domain. Understandably, then, it is the starting
point for nearly every existing theory of epistemic modality, including standard contextualist, relativist and
expressivist theories. However, it is also the source of many of the descriptive problems that these theories
face. In my dissertation, I argue that orthodox theories of epistemic modality overlook an important positive
evidence requirement on epistemic modals.
Where EM is an epistemic modal operator, an assertion of EMf is true only if there is positive
evidence that supports f.
The positive evidence requirement is supported by linguistic and cross-linguistic data. It is also behind many
of the most vexing puzzles about epistemic modality including modal disagreement puzzles:
Watson: Moriarty might be in Beijing.
Sherlock: No, thats false. Hes in London.
Watson: Oh, I guess I was wrong.
Standard theories of epistemic modality struggle to explain modal disagreement. In Chapter One, I argue
that the reason for this failure is that modal disagreement is not disagreement about whether the unmodalized
prejacent proposition (Moriarty is in Beijing) is compatible with a body of evidence or knowledge (whoever
it belongs to), but disagreement about whether the prejacent proposition is supported by evidence.
The positive evidence requirement is both semantically and epistemically significant. Although epistemologists often talk of justification and warrant, these are not the most common ordinary language terms
of epistemic appraisal. In everyday circumstances, speakers mostly talk of what is epistemically possible or
necessary. Accordingly, any notion of evidence tied to epistemic modality ought to be given an especially
central role in epistemic theorizing. In Chapter Two, I propose an account of the kind of evidence demanded
by the positive evidence requirement, using modal disagreement data as a guide. I argue that epistemic
modal statements track a notion of evidence that is especially objective in the sense that whether e is evidence that h for an epistemic subject S depends not just on what S believes about e, h and the relationship
between them, but on agent-independent empirical facts.
In Chapter Three, I turn to questions about the semantics of epistemic necessity modals. According to
von Fintel & Gillies (2008), strong necessity operators like must and have to are factive operators: (have
to/must f is true only if f is true). I argue that these operators are non-factive. Although must is logically
stronger than many other epistemic necessity operators (for example, should and ought), must claims are
weaker than their bare prejacents. I argue that the data that allegedly support the factivity of strong
necessity operators are better explained by the positive evidence requirement on these modals.
In Chapter Four, I put the positive evidence requirement and the non-factivity of strong epistemic
necessity operators to epistemological work. According to Lewis (1996; see also DeRose 1993), conjunctions
like (1) are no more than overt, explicit statements of epistemic fallibilism, the view that knowledge does
not require entailing evidence:
(1) I know that Moriarty is in Beijing, but he might be in London.

The challenge to the fallibilist is to explain why conjunctions like these sound contradictory. I argue that
Lewis challenge rests on a mistaken view of modal semantics. In defense of fallibilism, I argue that conjunctions like (1) continue to sound contradictory when know is replaced with strong necessity operators like
must or have to even though those operators express a manifestly fallible sense of epistemic necessity.
(2) Moriarty must be in Beijing, but he might be in London.
Second, I show that the contradictoriness of both kinds of conjunction can be explained by appealing to the
positive evidence requirement on epistemic modals, and by distinguishing between the fallibilist view that
one can know f even if ones evidence does not entail f and the stronger (and false!) view that one can know
f even if one has undefeated evidence against f.
In Chapter Five, I turn to a related set of abominable conjunctions Yalcins epistemic contradictions:
(3) It is raining and it might not be raining.
According to Yalcin (2007, 2010), epistemic contradictions are a threat to the view that the semantic values
of bare epistemic modal sentences are standard propositions (functions from worlds to truth-values). I
show that epistemic contradictions instead threaten theories of epistemic modality (including Yalcins) that
overlook the positive evidence requirement.