Visiting speaker seminar

Speaker: Daniel Rothschild (University College London)

Title: Placing the Problem of Permission

Abstract: Lewis (1979) described the 'problem of permission' as the the problem of making sense of how to update the sphere of permissible worlds in light of new permissions. Permitting an action allows into the sphere of permissible worlds some but not all worlds in which that action is performed. I will discuss some new attempts at approaching this problem using the framework of truthmaker semantics. I will also discuss the relationship between this problem of permission and the semantics of the possibility modals (such as 'may' and 'can') that can be used to express permission.