Philosophical Quarterly 67 (266):22-37 (2017)
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Abstract |
Possible-worlds accounts of mental or linguistic content are often criticized for being too coarse-grained. To make room for more fine-grained distinctions among contents, several authors have recently proposed extending the space of possible worlds by "impossible worlds". We argue that this strategy comes with serious costs: we would effectively have to abandon most of the features that make the possible-worlds framework attractive. More generally, we argue that while there are intuitive and theoretical considerations against overly coarse-grained notions of content, the same kinds of considerations also prohibit an overly fine-grained individuation of content. An adequate notion of content, it seems, should have intermediate granularity. However, it is hard to construe a notion of content that meets these demands. Any notion of content, we suggest, must be either implausibly coarse-grained or implausibly fine-grained (or both).
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Keywords | Possible-worlds semantics Impossible worlds Hyperintensionality Proposition |
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Reprint years | 2017 |
DOI | 10.1093/pq/pqw028 |
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References found in this work BETA
Über Sinn und Bedeutung.Gottlob Frege - 1892 - Zeitschrift für Philosophie Und Philosophische Kritik 100 (1):25-50.
Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions.Jaakko Hintikka - 1962 - Studia Logica 16:119-122.
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Citations of this work BETA
A Dynamic Solution to the Problem of Logical Omniscience.Mattias Skipper & Jens Bjerring - 2019 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 48 (3):501-521.
Hyperintensional Semantics: A Fregean Approach.Mattias Skipper & Jens Christian Bjerring - 2020 - Synthese 197 (8):3535-3558.
Sensitivity, Safety, and Impossible Worlds.Guido Melchior - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (3):713-729.
View all 9 citations / Add more citations
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