Might well

It’s occurred to me that the “might well happen that” operator makes for an interesting modality. It divides into an epistemic and a metaphysical version. In both cases, if it might well happen that p, then p is possible (in the respective sense). In both cases, there is a tempting paraphrase of the operator into a probability: on the epistemic side, one might say that it might well happen that p if and only if p has a sufficiently high epistemic probability, and on the metaphysical side, one might say that it might well happen that p if and only if p has a sufficiently high chance given the contextually relevant background. In both cases, it is not clear that the probabilistic paraphrase is correct—there may be (might well be!) cases of “might well happen that” where numerical probabilities have no place. And in both cases, “might well happen that” seems context-sensitive and vague. It might well be that thinking about this operator could lead to progress on something interesting.