Agential Modal Contextualism

Abstract

The argument for contextualism regarding freedom and moral responsibility begins with agential modals, the ‘cans’, ‘coulds’, and ‘ables’ of our discourse. Given the evidence from ordinary language, it is argued that all acceptable analyses of agential modals should be committed to contextualism. The chapter begins by introducing the notion of an agential modal and characterizing the commitments of a contextualist analysis. After this, evidence in favour of a contextualist account of agential modals is outlined and responses to data that counts against contextualism are offered. The chapter ends by contrasting contextualism, positively, with two rival views, relativism and the default rival, invariantism.