Possible Worlds Semantics Based on Observation and Communication

2018 ◽  
pp. 339-362
Author(s):  
Andreas Herzig ◽  
Emiliano Lorini ◽  
Faustine Maffre
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics

The Failure of Conceptual Analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer McKitrick
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics ◽  
Conditional Statements ◽  
Reductive Analysis

Dispositions are often regarded with suspicion. Consequently, some philosophers try to semantically reduce disposition ascriptions to sentences containing only non-dispositional vocabulary. Typically, reductionists attempt to analyze disposition ascriptions in terms of conditional statements. These conditional statements, like other modal claims, are often interpreted in terms of possible worlds semantics. However, conditional analyses are subject to a number of problems and counterexamples, including random coincidences, void satisfaction, masks, antidotes, mimics, altering, and finks. Some analyses fail to reduce disposition ascriptions to non-modal vocabulary. If reductive analysis of disposition ascriptions fails, then perhaps there can be metaphysical reduction of dispositions without semantic reduction. However, the reductionist still owes us an account of what makes disposition ascriptions true. But to posit a causal power for every unreduced dispositional predicate is an overreaction to the failure of conceptual analysis.

Possible Worlds Counterfactual Theories of Causation

1980 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 119-138
Author(s):  
Richard Adler
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Treatment ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Great Length ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Counterfactual Theory ◽  
Causal Theories ◽  
Counterfactual Approach

The numerous difficulties facing the traditional Humean regularity approach to the problem of causation have been discussed in the literature at great length. In view of the current interest in possible worlds semantics, it is not surprising that the only serious alternative treatment of causation presently available, the counterfactual approach, has been explored recently as a means of circumventing the apparently unresolvable difficulties facing regularity causal theories. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest that such a strategy holds little promise. Specifically, I will argue that, in addition to giving rise to problems directly analogous to those facing regularity accounts, the counterfactual approach fails in principle to reflect important properties of causal relations as we understand them intuitively. David Lewis's possible worlds account, the most comprehensive counterfactual theory to date, is further criticized for implicit problems with natural lawhood even more serious than those typically raised for regularity accounts, for additional inadequacies in its analysis of causal relations, and for its failure to satisfy basic empiricist epistemological standards.

Language, Meaning, and Information

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Soames
Keyword(s):  
Modal Logic ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Gottlob Frege ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics ◽  
Language Meaning

This chapter is a case study of the process by which the attempt to solve philosophical problems sometimes leads to the birth of new domains of scientific inquiry. It traces how advances in logic and the philosophy of mathematics, starting with Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, provided the foundations for what became a rigorous and scientific study of language, meaning, and information. After sketching the early stages of the story, it explains the importance of modal logic and “possible worlds semantics” in providing the foundation for the last half century of work in linguistic semantics and the philosophy of language. It argues that this foundation is insufficient to support the most urgently needed further advances. It proposes a new conception of truth-evaluable information as inherently representational cognitive acts of certain kinds. The chapter concludes by explaining how this conception of propositions can be used to illuminate the notion of truth; vindicate the connection between truth and meaning; and fulfill a central, but so far unkept, promise of possible worlds semantics.

Possible worlds semantics

2010 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Paul Gochet
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics

Possible worlds semantics

2007 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Paul Gochet
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document