Single Idea 14719

[catalogued under 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 Reference

'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.