A logical theory for conditional weak ontic necessity based on context update

Abstract

Weak ontic necessity is the ontic necessity expressed by ``should'' or ``ought to'' in English. An example of it is ``I should be dead by now''. A feature of this necessity is whether it holds does not have anything to do with whether its prejacent holds. In this paper, we present a logical theory for conditional weak ontic necessity based on context update. A context is a set of ordered defaults, determining expected possible states of the present world. Sentences are evaluated with respect to contexts. When evaluating the conditional weak ontic necessity with respect to a context, we first update the context with the antecedent, then check whether the consequent holds with respect to the updated context. The logic is complete. Our theory combines premise semantics and update semantics for conditionals.