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Single Idea 14719

[filed under theme 19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 8. Possible Worlds Semantics ]

Full Idea

A problem for a standard possible worlds analysis is that all necessary truths have precisely the same content (the function mapping every world to the True). Hesperus=Phosphorus has the same content as Hesperus=Hesperus-and-2+2=4.

Gist of Idea

In the possible worlds account all necessary truths are same (because they all map to the True)

Source

Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 3.3)

Book Ref

'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.40

A Reaction

If this is supposed to be a theory of meaning then it has gone very badly wrong indeed. Has modern semantics taken a wrong turning somewhere? Two-dimensionalism is meant to address some of these problems.

The 19 ideas from 'Two-Dimensional Semantics'

14695 Semantic theories show how truth of sentences depends on rules for interpreting and joining their parts [Schroeter]
14696 Simple semantics assigns extensions to names and to predicates [Schroeter]
14697 'Federer' and 'best tennis player' can't mean the same, despite having the same extension [Schroeter]
14698 Possible worlds semantics uses 'intensions' - functions which assign extensions at each world [Schroeter]
14699 Possible worlds make 'I' and that person's name synonymous, but they have different meanings [Schroeter]
14701 Array worlds along the horizontal, and contexts (world,person,time) along the vertical [Schroeter]
14702 If we introduce 'actually' into modal talk, we need possible worlds twice to express this [Schroeter]
14703 Superficial necessity is true in all worlds; deep necessity is thus true, no matter which world is actual [Schroeter]
14705 Do we know apriori how we refer to names and natural kinds, but their modal profiles only a posteriori? [Schroeter]
14704 2D semantics gives us apriori knowledge of our own meanings [Schroeter]
14706 Your view of water depends on whether you start from the actual Earth or its counterfactual Twin [Schroeter]
14711 Rationalists say knowing an expression is identifying its extension using an internal cognitive state [Schroeter]
14709 Possible worlds semantics implies a constitutive connection between meanings and modal claims [Schroeter]
14715 2D fans defend it for conceptual analysis, for meaning, and for internalist reference [Schroeter]
14714 Contradictory claims about a necessary god both seem apriori coherent [Schroeter]
14716 2D semantics can't respond to contingent apriori claims, since there is no single proposition involved [Schroeter]
14717 Internalist meaning is about understanding; externalist meaning is about embedding in a situation [Schroeter]
14719 In the possible worlds account all necessary truths are same (because they all map to the True) [Schroeter]
14720 Semantic theory assigns meanings to expressions, and metasemantics explains how this works [Schroeter]