Self-knowledge, belief, ability (and agency?)

Self-Reference, Knowledge, Belief, and Modality

An apparently negative result of Montague has diverted research in formal modalities away from syntactic (“first-order”) approaches, encouraging rather weak and semantically complex modal formalisms, especially in representing epistemic notions. We show that, Montague notwithstanding, consistent and straightforward firstorder syntactic treatments of modality are possible, especially for belief ...

Background Knowledge and Translation Ability

Reasoning about Belief and Knowledge with Self-Reference and Time

In two previous papers (Asher & Karnp 1986,1987), Hans Kamp and I developed a framework for investigating the logic of attitudes whose objects involved an unlimited capacity for self-reference. The framework was the daughter of two well-known parents-possible worlds semantics and the revisionist, semi-inductive theory of truth developed by Herzberger (1982) and Gupta (1982). Nevertheless, the o...

Languages with Self-Reference II: Knowledge, Belief, and Modality

Negative results of Montague and Thomason have div erted research in propositional attitudes away from syntactic (‘first-order’) approaches, encouraging modal formalisms instead, especially in representing epistemic notions. We show that modal logics are on no firmer ground than first-order ones when equally endowed with substitutive self-reference. Nonetheless, there may still be remedies, hin...

Coalitional agency and evidence-based ability

The logics of “bringing it about” have been part of a prominent tradition for the formalization of individual and institutional agency. Our objective here is to extend Elgesem’s logic of individual agency and ability to coalitions.