The Semantics of 'Good' (original) (raw)
The meaning of ‘good’ has long been a topic of philosophical interest. Much of the philosophical literature has aimed to understand the semantics of ‘good’ within predicative and attributive constructions. In these constructions, ‘good’ has often been understood to predicate some property or concept (or family thereof), though this view has been challenged by non-cognitivists. Relatively little attention has been given to a range of syntactic constructions ‘good’ occurs in that are characteristic of modal adjectives, such as ‘necessary’ and ‘possible’. The present paper argues that these constructions are more revealing as to the semantics of ‘good’. The central thesis will be that ‘good’ is a modal adjective with a distinctive modal semantics that, rather than merely quantifying over possible worlds, sets up comparisons between worlds. This constitutes both a novel approach to the semantics of ‘good’ and a novel species of modality. The predicates ‘good’ occurs in have a derivative modal semantics that applies to objects by construing them as occupying a particular role within worlds that the semantics can compare.
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