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Future Paths of Phenomenology

1st OPHEN Summer Meeting

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235119

Hyperintensional propositions

Mark Jago

pp. 585-601

Abstract

Propositions play a central role in contemporary semantics. On the Russellian account, propositions are structured entities containing particulars, properties and relations. This contrasts sharply with the sets-of-possible-worlds view of propositions. I’ll discuss how to extend the sets-of-worlds view to accommodate fine-grained hyperintensional contents. When this is done in a satisfactory way, I’ll argue, it makes heavy use of entities very much like Russellian tuples. The two notions of proposition become inter-definable and inter-substitutable: they are not genuinely distinct accounts of how propositions represent what they represent. Semantic theorists may move freely between the two conceptions of what propositions are. Nevertheless, the two approaches give different accounts of the metaphysical nature of propositions. I argue that the sets-of-worlds view provides an adequate account of the nature of propositions, whereas the Russellian view cannot.

Publication details

Published in:

Jespersen Bjørn, Duží Marie (2015) Hyperintensionality. Synthese 192 (3).

Pages: 585-601

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-014-0461-y

Full citation:

Jago Mark (2015) „Hyperintensional propositions“. Synthese 192 (3), 585–601.