Selection Function Semantics for Will

Abstract

We develop a new semantics for the English auxiliary will that exploits a Stalnaker-style, single-world selection function. Unlike existing theories, the resulting analysis succeeds in satisfying three desiderata: it accounts for the modal character of will, it predicts its peculiar lack of scope interactions, and it vindicates intuitive judgments about the probabilities of will-claims. We develop a new semantics for the English auxiliary will that exploits selection functions, similarly to Stalnaker’s [24] semantics for conditionals. The semantic is motivated by three constraint, which we state in §1. In §2, we show that no existing account satisfies all three constraints. We state our analysis in §3. In §4 and §5, respectively, we show how this analysis accommodates indeterminacy about the future and intuitive judgments about the probability of will-claims. We close, in §6, by discussing the assertability of will-claims.