Monotonicity in intensional contexts Weakening and pragmatic effects under modals and attitudes

This dissertation examines the role of modality, specifically epistemic and desiderative modalities, in addressing monotonicity puzzles within modal contexts. It argues that these puzzles, which challenge the monotonic semantics of modalities, result from pragmatic effects incited by the inherently underspecified conclusions of monotonic reasoning.
The dissertation presents a thorough analysis of two main topics. The first includes a detailed investigation into the infelicity of monotonic inferences under modal and attitude verbs, offering a unified account of this issue. The second part explores how these puzzles impact the semantic and logical properties of modalities, using epistemic and desiderative modalities as case studies.
Key components include a systematic exploration of knowledge, belief, and epistemic possibilities through a state-based semantics, and a focus on how epistemic might’s perspective-sensitive nature affects its interpretation in multi-agent contexts. The dissertation also introduces a new logic of desire that incorporates causal inference by blending preference logic's betterness model with the causal model of inference, forming a desire-causality model. It further establishes a complete logic for this model.