The Meaning of Modal Discourse
The goal of this chapter is to make it clear how the modal normativist account can avoid the notorious “Frege-Geach” or “embedding” problem that has long threatened non-descriptive views of all kinds. While Chapter 2 identifies an alternative function for modal discourse, we cannot take this to be a matter of identifying the meaning of modal terms. For modal claims may be embedded in conditionals, negations, etc., in which case they are not serving their characteristic function, and yet must be thought to have the same meaning. To meet this problem, this chapter gives the meaning of modal terms in terms of their inferential role—which is constant even in embedded contexts—and shows how this meaning is related to the function of modal terms. The chapter also aims to show how the modal normativist account can avoid the classic objections to modal conventionalism.