Weak Necessity
Aynat Rubinstein · 2020
Getting the meaning ofoughtright and accounting for its relation tomusthas proven to be a considerable challenge for deontic logic as well as formal semantic analyses of modality. This chapter aims to give a language‐independent characterization of weak necessity as a phenomenon of gradable modality, focusing on morphological, semantic, and discursive properties of modals likeought. Weak necessity requires us to distinguish between degrees of necessity. Two theoretical frameworks for doing so are evaluated in the chapter. The two frameworks are shown to have complementary strengths, highlighting the distinction between probability‐based weak necessities and priority‐oriented ones.