Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hesiod, Gareth Evans and Sarah Sawyer

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1 idea

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 5. Contingency
'Superficial' contingency: false in some world; 'Deep' contingency: no obvious verification [Evans, by Macià/Garcia-Carpentiro]
     Full Idea: Evans says intuitively a sentence is 'superficially' contingent if the function from worlds to truth values assigns F to some world; it is 'deeply' contingent if understanding it does not guarantee that there is a verifying state of affairs.
     From: report of Gareth Evans (Reference and Contingency [1979]) by Macià/Garcia-Carpentiro - Introduction to 'Two-Dimensional Semantics' 2
     A reaction: This distinction is used by Davies and Humberstone (1980) to construct an early version of 2-D semantics (see under Language|Semantics). The point is that part comes from understanding it, and another part from assigning truth values.