ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the consideration of some of the most powerful recent objections to contextualism about epistemic modals, as well as replies to those objections. The most frequently cited data for deciding between rival semantic hypotheses for modal expressions are competent speakers' truth-assessments of modal sentences in stipulated scenarios. MacFarlane offers as his most powerful motivation for relativism about epistemic modals. In a series of recent papers, Seth Yalcin argues for a view he calls "Non-factualism" about epistemic modals. The chapter explores how to explain the felicity of the sentences in Raincoat and Windowless Office within the framework of a semantic theory, such as Yalcin's, designed to predict that they are contradictory. Something analogous is true of the relation between contextualism about epistemic modals (or other alleged sources of truth-shiftiness, such as relativism) and the semantics of knowledge-attributions.
