Angelika Kratzer

This paper is about a connection between knowledge ascriptions and counterfactual reasoning. In both cases, facts are central. And in neither case can we get away with facts that are merely true propositions. A more specific notion is needed. The unifying theme of the chapter are variations of Gettier puzzles. Gettier puzzles are widely discussed with knowledge ascriptions, but we also find them in other areas. There are Gettier‐analogs of mere belief ascriptions, of content ascriptions without mental attitudes, and of counterfactual reasoning. In the first part of the paper, I suggest that what makes a Gettier example a Gettier example in knowledge ascriptions is that the propositional content of the belief is described correctly, but it so happens that the content is exemplified by a fact that the believer has no belief about. A true description of the propositional content of the belief picks out the wrong res. The second part of the paper shows that an analogous mismatch between propositions and exemplifying facts is a potential source of trouble for counterfactual reasoning. In counterfactual reasoning, too, we have to keep an eye on the exemplifying facts of true propositions. The paper concludes with the suggestion to project premise sets for counterfactuals at various levels of specificity from worldly facts.

In this article we will explore the consequences of adopting recent proposals by Chomsky, according to which the syntactic derivation proceeds in terms of phases. The notion of phase – through the associated notion of spellout – allows for an insightful theory of the fact that syntactic constituents receive default phrase stress not across the board, but as a function of yet-to-be-explicated conditions on their syntactic context. We will see that the phonological evi- dence requires us to modify somewhat the theory of which functional categories actually define a phase. Patterns of default, syntax-determined, phrase stress are argued to result from a prosodic spellout requiring the highest phrase in the spellout domain to correspond to a major prosodic phrase in phonological representation, and carry major phrase stress.