Statements about the future are central in everyday conversation and reasoning. How should we understand their meaning? The received view among philosophers treats will as a tense: in ‘Cynthia will pass her exam’, will shifts the reference time forward. Linguists, however, have produced substantial evidence for the view that will is a modal, on a par with must and would. The different accounts are designed to satisfy different theoretical constraints, apparently pulling in opposite directions. We show that these constraints are jointly satisfied by a novel modal account of will. On this account, will is a modal but doesn't work as a quantifier over worlds. Rather, the meaning of will involves a selection function similar to the one used by Stalnaker in his semantics for conditionals. The resulting theory yields a plausible semantics and logic for will and vindicates our intuitive views about the attitudes that rational agents should have towards future-directed contents.

中文翻译：

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会做得更好：选择语义、未来可信度和不确定性

关于未来的陈述是日常对话和推理的核心。我们应该如何理解它们的含义？哲学家们普遍接受的观点将 will 视为时态：在“辛西娅将通过考试”中，将参考时间向前移动。然而，语言学家已经为 will 是一种情态的观点提供了大量证据，与 must 和 will 相提并论。不同的帐户旨在满足不同的理论约束，显然是朝着相反的方向发展。我们表明，这些约束是由一种新的意志模态解释共同满足的。因此，will 是一种模态，但不能作为世界范围内的量词。相反，will 的含义涉及一种选择函数，类似于 Stalnaker 在他的条件句语义中使用的选择函数。