Talk:Epistemic possibility

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Confused[edit]

or similar modal terms that are sometimes confused (such as may be and might be),

Hitler might have been victorious in World War II
Hitler may have been victorious in World War II

Although these two statements are often confused with one another, they mean two different things

... this is ridiculous. "Might" and "may" do usually mean the exact same thing, and these sentences can mean the exact same thing. In a very specific lingo (like the topic of the article), assigning contrasting meanings to two words that are normally synonyms can certainly be useful; but to say that the people who are unaware that somewhere someone has decided that in a specific lingo the words should have contrasting meanings, are just often acting "confused", is... dumb. --VillemVillemVillem (talk) 03:42, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible that it's raining outside[edit]

I don't find this rain example to be very enlightening. To me, the problem is that you are using two completely different sentences to try to show the distinction between epistemic and metaphysical possibility:

"It's possible that it is raining outside" vs. "It's possible for it to rain outside"

Of course they each mean something different, because they are completely different sentences. A better example is the Hitler example, except that I think you could go one step further and make those two statements exactly the same by using "might" or "may" in both of them, instead of each word in one sentence.

Doing so helps to show that the distinction is purely in terms of the epistemic or metaphysical possibility of the statement, and not just a trick of semantics (as I think the previous commenter is referring to in his confusion about might/may). --JohnJSal (talk) 21:34, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]