Wolfgang Schwarz
Fellow, University of Edinburgh
Philosophy of language and formal epistemology
I am a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. I work in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, decision theory, formal logic, and other parts of contemporary theoretical philosophy. I have touched on the topic of abilities from two angles. One is in philosophy of language and logic. Here I am interested in the semantics of modal constructions, for which ability modals provide an interesting test case. In a recent paper, I have defended the classical "modal" analysis of ability statements, although with a novel tweak. In a different context, I have been thinking about how an agent's decision-theoretic options should be identified and individuated. (See e.g. this draft.) Relatedly, I'd like to understand what we can say about what else would have been the case if an agent had chosen an option she could have chosen but did not choose. I'm also always keen to learn what other people are thinking about!