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Meaning Meeting - Yunhui Bai / Wonder and belief

A young man in glasses, standing on a Californian beach: it's Philosophy PhD student, Yunhui Bai!

Meaning Meeting - Yunhui Bai / Wonder and belief

Linguistics | Philosophy Thursday, October 19, 2023 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm Marie Mount Hall, 1401 (Blue Room)

Thursday October 19, the Meaning Meeting has Yunhui Bai from Philosophy presenting his work on 'believe' and 'wonder'. An abstract follows.


Intuitively, wondering implies uncertainty and settles at certainty. And belief is weaker than certainty and seems compatible with wondering. But it turns out that we have a bunch of data indicating that 'believe p' and 'wonder whether p' sound incoherent together. I will argue that there is indeed a semantic inconsistency between them, and give a Hintikka-style semantics for 'wonder whether p' that hopefully generalizes.

Add to Calendar 10/19/23 14:00:00 10/19/23 15:15:00 America/New_York Meaning Meeting - Yunhui Bai / Wonder and belief

Thursday October 19, the Meaning Meeting has Yunhui Bai from Philosophy presenting his work on 'believe' and 'wonder'. An abstract follows.


Intuitively, wondering implies uncertainty and settles at certainty. And belief is weaker than certainty and seems compatible with wondering. But it turns out that we have a bunch of data indicating that 'believe p' and 'wonder whether p' sound incoherent together. I will argue that there is indeed a semantic inconsistency between them, and give a Hintikka-style semantics for 'wonder whether p' that hopefully generalizes.

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