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Single Idea 16470
[filed under theme 19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 8. Possible Worlds Semantics
]
Full Idea
For Plantinga, essences are entities in their own right and will have properties different from what instantiates them. Hence he will need individual essences of individual essences, distinct from the essences. I see no way to avoid a hierarchy of them.
Gist of Idea
Plantinga's essences have their own properties - so will have essences, giving a hierarchy
Source
comment on Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 4.4
Book Ref
Stalnaker,Robert C.: 'Mere Possibilities' [Princeton 2012], p.118
A Reaction
This sounds devastating for Plantinga, but it is a challenge for traditional Aristotelians. Only a logician suffers from a hierarchy, but a scientist might have to live with an essence, which contains a super-essence.
Related Ideas
Idea 16469
Plantinga has domains of sets of essences, variables denoting essences, and predicates as functions [Plantinga, by Stalnaker]
Idea 16471
I accept a hierarchy of properties of properties of properties [Stalnaker]
The
17 ideas
with the same theme
[giving full meaning by specifying some set of possible worlds]:
11968
|
The intension of a sentence is the set of all possible worlds in which it is true
[Carnap, by Kaplan]
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16469
|
Plantinga has domains of sets of essences, variables denoting essences, and predicates as functions
[Plantinga, by Stalnaker]
|
16470
|
Plantinga's essences have their own properties - so will have essences, giving a hierarchy
[Stalnaker on Plantinga]
|
16410
|
Extensional semantics has individuals and sets; modal semantics has intensions, functions of world to extension
[Stalnaker]
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16448
|
Possible world semantics may not reduce modality, but it can explain it
[Stalnaker]
|
7869
|
Truth conditions in possible worlds can't handle statements about impossibilities
[Papineau]
|
7868
|
Thought content is possible worlds that make the thought true; if that includes the actual world, it's true
[Papineau]
|
7773
|
A sentence's truth conditions is the set of possible worlds in which the sentence is true
[Lycan]
|
7774
|
Possible worlds explain aspects of meaning neatly - entailment, for example, is the subset relation
[Lycan]
|
9207
|
If sentence content is all worlds where it is true, all necessary truths have the same content!
[Fine,K]
|
17701
|
Possible worlds semantics has a nice compositional account of modal statements
[Mares]
|
13248
|
We can rest truth-conditions on situations, rather than on possible worlds
[Beall/Restall]
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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]
|
14709
|
Possible worlds semantics implies a constitutive connection between meanings and modal claims
[Schroeter]
|
14719
|
In the possible worlds account all necessary truths are same (because they all map to the True)
[Schroeter]
|
18417
|
Possible worlds accounts of content are notoriously coarse-grained
[Cappelen/Dever]
|