The ontology of (merely) intentional objects is a can of worms. If we can avoid ontological commitment to such entities, we should. In this paper, I offer a strategy for accomplishing that. This is to reject the traditional act-object account of intentionality in favor of an adverbial account. According to adverbialism about intentionality, having a dragon thought is not a matter of bearing the thinking-about relation to dragons, but of engaging in the activity of thinking dragon-wise.

This paper argues for a particular view about in what metaphysical equivalence consists: namely, that any two metaphysical theories are metaphysically equivalent if and only if those theories are strongly hyperintensionally equivalent. It is consistent with this characterisation that said theories are weakly hyperintensionally distinct, thus affording us the resources to model the content of propositional attitudes directed towards metaphysically equivalent theories in such a way that non-ideal agents can bear different propositional attitudes towards metaphysically equivalent theories.

While standard first-order modal logic is quite powerful, it cannot express even very simple sentences like “I could have been taller than I actually am” or “Everyone could have been smarter than they actually are”. These are examples of cross-world predication, whereby objects in one world are related to objects in another world. Extending first-order modal logic to allow for cross-world predication in a motivated way has proven to be notoriously difficult. In this paper, I argue that the standard accounts (...) of cross-world predication all leave something to be desired. I then propose an account of cross-world predication based on quantified hybrid logic and show how it overcomes the limitations of these previous accounts. I will conclude by discussing various philosophical consequences and applications of such an account. (shrink)

Many naive realists endorse a negative disjunctivist strategy in order to deal with the challenge presented by the possibility of phenomenologically indistinguishable halucination. In the first part of this paper I argue that this approach is methodologically inconsistent because it undercuts the phenomenological motivation that underlies the the appeal of naive realism. In the second part of the paper I develop an alternative to the negative disjunctivist account along broadly Meinongian lines. In the last section of this paper I consider (...) and evaluate a somewhat similar but rival view of hallucination developed by Mark Johnston. (shrink)

I spell out a problem with the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo: that, contra the doctrine, it is not possible to efficiently cause something from nothing. This is because an efficient cause requires a material cause in order to have an effect. The material cause supplies the potency that the efficient cause actualises. Because nothingness has no potencies, there is nothing for an efficient cause to actualise. I show that this objection presupposes that the theory of noneism (the proposition that (...) some things do not exist) is false. I postulate that the universe (i.e. the created order) is a non-existent item and so there is no problem with the claim that it was efficiently caused to come from nothing – the universe has no being anyway. After rehearsing the rather strong reasons in favour of the truth of noneism, I deal with two objections that are peculiar to my claim that the universe lacks reality: that creation possesses characteristics that are sufficient to render it existent and that a non-existent object has its properties independent of divine fiat. I show that there are sensible replies to both objections. With regard to the first I show that the possession of such characteristics at most shows that the universe has an ontological status that is equivalent to some reference point. With regard to the second I argue that the Characterisation Principle (i.e. in some world – not necessarily the actual world – an object has the properties that it is characterised as having) entails that non-existent objects possess their properties in virtue of some existent entity and that the only plausible candidate for such an entity is a divine mind of some sort. (shrink)

Substantial facts are not well-understood entities. Many philosophers object to their existence on this basis. Yet facts, if they can be understood, promise to do a lot of philosophical work: they can be used to construct theories of property possession and truthmaking, for example. Here, I give a formal theory of facts, including negative and logically complex facts. I provide a theory of reduction similar to that of the typed λ -calculus and use it to provide identity conditions for facts. (...) This theory validates truthmaker maximalism : it provides truthmakers for all truths. I then show how the usual truth-in-a-model relation can be replaced by two relations: one between models and facts, saying that a given fact obtains relative to the model, and the other between facts and propositions: the truthmaking relation. (shrink)

Impossible worlds are representations of impossible things and impossible happenings. They earn their keep in a semantic or metaphysical theory if they do the right theoretical work for us. As it happens, a worlds-based account provides the best philosophical story about semantic content, knowledge and belief states, cognitive significance and cognitive information, and informative deductive reasoning. A worlds-based story may also provide the best semantics for counterfactuals. But to function well, all these accounts need use of impossible and as well (...) as possible worlds. So what are impossible worlds? Graham Priest claims that any of the usual stories about possible worlds can be told about impossible worlds, too. But far from it. I'll argue that impossible worlds cannot be genuine worlds, of the kind proposed by Lewis, McDaniel or Yagisawa. Nor can they be ersatz worlds on the model proposed by Melia or Sider. Constructing impossible worlds, it turns out, requires novel metaphysical resources. (shrink)

The logical omniscience problem, whereby standard models of epistemic logic treat an agent as believing all consequences of its beliefs and knowing whatever follows from what else it knows, has received plenty of attention in the literature. But many attempted solutions focus on a fairly narrow specification of the problem: avoiding the closure of belief or knowledge, rather than showing how the proposed logic is of philosophical interest or of use in computer science or artificial intelligence. Sentential epistemic logics, as (...) opposed to traditional possible worlds approaches, do not suffer from the problems of logical omniscience but are often thought to lack interesting epistemic properties. In this paper, I focus on the case of rule-based agents, which play a key role in contemporary AI research but have been neglected in the logical literature. I develop a framework for modelling monotonic, nonmonotonic and introspective rule-based reasoners which have limited cognitive resources and prove that the resulting models have a number of interesting properties. An axiomatization of the resulting logic is given, together with completeness, decidability and complexity results. (shrink)

You and I can differ in what we say, or believe, even though the things we say, or believe, are logically equivalent. Discussing what is said, or believed, requires notions of content which are finer-grained than sets of (metaphysically or logically) possible worlds. In this paper, I develop the approach to fine-grained content in terms of a space of possible and impossible worlds. I give a method for constructing ersatz worlds based on theory of substantial facts. I show how this (...) theory overcomes an objection to actualist constructions of ersatz worlds and argue that it naturally gives rise to useful notions of fine-grained content. (shrink)

Impossible worlds are regarded with understandable suspicion by most philosophers. Here we are concerned with a modal argument which might seem to show that acknowledging their existence, or more particularly, the existence of some hypothetical (we do not say “possible”) world in which everything was the case, would have drastic effects, forcing us to conclude that everything is indeed the case—and not just in the hypothesized world in question. The argument is inspired by a metaphysical (rather than modal-logical) argument of (...) Paul Kabay’s which would have us accept this unpalatable conclusion, though its details bear a closer resemblance to a line of thought developed by Jc Beall, in response to which Graham Priest has made some philosophical moves which are echoed in our diagnosis of what goes wrong with the present modal argument. Logical points of some interest independent of the main issue arise along the way. (shrink)

Russellians can have a no proposition view of empty names. I will defend this theory against the problem of meaningfulness, and show that the theory is in general well motivated. My solution to the problem of meaningfulness is that speakers’ judgements about meaningfulness are tracking grammaticality, and not propositional content.

This paper examines the logic of fictions within fictions. I argue that consistently nested consistent fictions must have certain formal characteristics. The most important is that they form a tree structure. Depending on one’s theory of fictional objects, additional constraints may apply regarding the appearance of a fictional object in two or more fictional universes. The background motivation for the paper is to use iterated fiction operators as a tool for making sense of iterated modal operators; I conclude by noting (...) briefly where the results about nested fictions can, and where they cannot, be extended to nested possible worlds. (shrink)

Non-actualist theories promise straightforward accounts of meaning, truth and reference of fictional discourse but are ostensibly saddled with a Selection Problem, that multiple possible candidates satisfy the role-descriptions associated with names used in fictions and no principled way to distinguish between them; yet if names are referential, there can only be one referent. The problem is often taken to be a serious—even decisive—obstacle for non-actualism, and the aim of this article is to show that the challenge can be met. I (...) suggest that storytellers and authors fix the referents of referential terms they use by arbitrary selecting referents through simple acts of stipulation, and then determine which of the worlds containing the relevant individuals serve as truth-makers for the story by adding properties to the characters. The resulting view of reference is consistent with reasonable, foundational requirements on reference, such as a causal-historical theory, and can moreover be used to support plausible theories of truth in fiction and facilitate elegant models of fiction as a type of discourse. (shrink)

How are philosophical questions about what kinds of things there are to be understood and how are they to be answered? This paper defends broadly Fregean answers to these questions. Ontological categories—such as object , property , and relation —are explained in terms of a prior logical categorization of expressions, as singular terms, predicates of varying degree and level, etc. Questions about what kinds of object, property, etc., there are are, on this approach, reduce to questions about truth and logical (...) form: for example, the question whether there are numbers is the question whether there are true atomic statements in which expressions function as singular terms which, if they have reference at all, stand for numbers, and the question whether there are properties of a given type is a question about whether there are meaningful predicates of an appropriate degree and level. This approach is defended against the objection that it must be wrong because makes what there depend on us or our language. Some problems confronting the Fregean approach—including Frege’s notorious paradox of the concept horse—are addressed. It is argued that the approach results in a modest and sober deflationary understanding of ontological commitments. (shrink)

Intentionality, or the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for things, remains central in the philosophy of mind. But the study of intentionality in the analytic tradition has been dominated by discussions of propositional attitudes such as belief, desire, and visual perception. There are, however, intentional states that aren't obviously propositional attitudes. For example, Indiana Jones fears snakes, Antony loves Cleopatra, and Jane hates the monster under her bed. The present paper explores such mental states (...) in an introductory but opinionated way. (shrink)

This paper offers a positive account of an important but under-explored class of mental states, non-propositional attitudes such as loving one’s department, liking lattice structures, fearing Freddy Krueger, and hating Sherlock Holmes. In broadest terms, the view reached is a representationalist account guided by two puzzles. The proposal allows one to say in an elegant way what differentiates a propositional attitude from an attitude merely about a proposition. The proposal also allows one to offer a unified account of the non-propositional (...) attitudes that captures both empty and non-empty cases by properly locating the posited representations in the metaphysical structure of the attitudes. (shrink)

Modal Meinongianism is a form of Meinongianism whose main supporters are Graham Priest and Francesco Berto. The main idea of modal Meinongianism is to restrict the logical deviance of Meinongian non-existent objects to impossible worlds and thus prevent it from “contaminating” the actual world: the round square is round and not round, but not in the actual world, only in an impossible world. In the actual world, supposedly, no contradiction is true. I will show that Priest’s semantics, as originally formulated (...) in Towards Non-being, tell us something different. According to certain models, there are true contradictions in the actual world. Berto and Priest have noticed this unexpected consequence and have suggested a solution, but I will show that their solution is highly questionable. In the last section of this paper, I will introduce a new and simpler version of modal Meinongianism that avoids the problem. (shrink)

Within a literary ontology, YHWH in the Hebrew Bible is technically also a fictional entity or object. In Hebrew Bible scholarship, a variety of philosophical issues surrounding fiction have received sustained and in-depth attention. However, the mainstream research on these matters tends to focus on the philosophical foundations of or backgrounds to a particular literary theory, rather than on metaphysical puzzles as encountered in the philosophy of fiction proper. To fill this gap, the present article seeks to provide a meta-theoretical (...) overview of the main contemporary philosophical perspectives on the metaphysics of fictional objects. Three views are discussed, namely possibilism, Meinongianism and creationism. Each view's theory is introduced and critically appropriated with reference to what is implied to be an answer to the question of what exactly the biblical character YHWH can meaningfully be said to be in the context of the metaphysics of fictional objects. In this way, the present study also goes beyond the traditional concern with the nature of God in Old Testament theology. (shrink)

The standard truth-conditional semantics for substitutional quantification, due to Saul Kripke, does not specify what proposition is expressed by sentences containing the particular substitutional quantifier. In this paper, I propose an alternative semantics for substitutional quantification that does. The key to this semantics is identifying an appropriate propositional function to serve as the content of a bound occurrence of a formula containing a free substitutional variable. I apply this semantics to traditional philosophical reasons for interest in substitutional quantification, namely, theories (...) of truth and ontological commitment. (shrink)

In this article I defend a form of classical possibilism with an actualist foundation. As a matter of fact, I believe that this position is more in keeping with the classical metaphysical tradition. According to this form of possibilism, I construe possible objects as possible non-existing objects of an existing producing power. Consequently, they are nothing vis-à -vis the modality of their own actual being, although they do exist with regard to the modality of the producing power’s being. The actualist (...) requirement prescribed by the Frege-Quinean criterion of the quantification domain is thus fulfilled; indeed, really possible objects are not actual objects, but their possibility is actual. (shrink)

If there are no fictional characters, how do we explain thought and discourse apparently about them? If there are, what are they like? A growing number of philosophers claim that fictional characters are abstract objects akin to novels or plots. They argue that postulating characters provides the most straightforward explanation of our literary practices as well as a uniform account of discourse and thought about fiction. Anti-realists counter that postulation is neither necessary nor straightforward, and that the invocation of pretense (...) provides a better account of the same phenomena. I outline and assess these competing theories. (shrink)

Perceptual disjunctivism, as I regard it in this paper, is the view that veridical perceptions and hallucinations, while indistinguishable via introspection, are states of fundamentally different kinds. This fundamental difference can be spelled out in various ways. According to the view I will be concerned with, it is a fundamental difference in the personal-level structure of both states. Against this version of disjunctivism, I will raise a new challenge. It is a variant of what can be seen as the standard (...) challenge against disjunctivism: how to do justice to the indistinguishability of veridical perceptions and hallucinations. It differs, however, from common versions of this challenge in where it locates the potential incompatibility of disjunctivism with the relevant fact of indistinguishability. Commonly, it is the disjunctivist assumption of a fundamental difference between both kinds of states which is regarded as incompatible with the indistinguishability of these states. In contrast, I will suggest that if hallucinations and veridical perceptions differed in the way proposed by structural disjunctivism, this difference would induce a corresponding difference in the psychological processes of their introspection and that the assumption of such a difference in the manner of introspection is most likely incompatible with a properly formulated indistinguishability claim. (shrink)

In her book Fiction and Metaphysics (1999) Amie Thomasson, influenced by the work of Roman Ingarden, develops a phenomenological approach to fictional entities in order to explain how non-fictional entities can be referred to intrafictionally and transfictionally, for example in the context of literary interpretation. As our starting point we take Thomasson’s realist theory of literary fictional objects, according to which such objects actually exist, albeit as abstract and artifactual entities. Thomasson’s approach relies heavily on the notion of ontological dependence, (...) but its precise semantics has not yet been developed. Moreover, the modal approach to the notion of ontological dependence underlying the Artifactual Theory has recently been contested by several scholars. The main aims of this paper are (i) to develop a semantic approach to the notion of ontological dependence in the context of the Artifactual Theory of fiction, and in so doing bridge a number of philosophical and logical gaps; (ii) to generalize Thomasson’s categorial theory of ontological dependence by reconstructing ontological categories of entities purely in terms of different structures of ontological dependence, rather than in terms of the basic kinds of entities the categorical entities depend on. (shrink)

McFetridge (in Logical necessity and other essays . London: Blackwell, 1990 ) suggests that to treat a proposition as logically necessary—to believe a proposition logically necessary, and to manifest that belief—is a matter of preparedness to deploy that proposition as a premise in reasoning from any supposition. We consider whether a suggestion in that spirit can be generalized to cover all cases of absolute necessity, both logical and non-logical, and we conclude that it can. In Sect. 2, we explain the (...) significance that such an account of manifestation of belief in absolute necessity has for the prospects of a non-realist theory of modality. In Sect. 3, we offer a sympathetic articulation of the detail that underlies the McFetridge conception of belief in logical necessity. In Sects. 4 and 5, we show that the conception so articulated will not generalize to encompass all cases of belief in absolute necessity and proceed to offer a remedy. Our proposal is based upon a distinction between two kinds of suppositional act: A-supposing and C-supposing (Sect. 6). In Sect. 7, we then explain and defend our central thesis: (roughly) that (manifestation of) belief in absolute necessity is a matter of preparedness to deploy as a premise in reasoning under any C-supposition. Finally, we indicate that there is some promise in the parallel thesis that manifestation of the treatment of a proposition as a priori is a matter of preparedness to deploy as a premise in reasoning under any A-supposition (Sect. 8). (shrink)

If a possible-worlds semantic theory for modal logics is pure, then the assertion of the theory, taken at face-value, can bring no commitment to the existence of a plurality of possible worlds (genuine or ersatz). But if we consider an applied theory (an application of the pure theory) in which the elements of the models are required to be possible worlds, then assertion of such a theory, taken at face-value, does appear to bring commitment to the existence of a plurality (...) of possible worlds. Or at least that is so if the applied theory is adequate. For an applied possible-worlds semantic theory that is constrained to contain only one-world models is bound to deliver results on validity, soundness and completeness that are apt to seem disastrous. I attempt to steer a course between commitment to the existence of a plurality of possible worlds and commitment to such a disastrous applied possible-worlds semantics by noting, and developing, the position of one who asserts such a theory at face-value but who remains agnostic about the existence of other (non-actualized) possible worlds. Thus, a novel interpretation of applied possible-worlds semantics is offered on which we may lay claim to whatever benefits such a theory offers while avoiding realism about (other) possible worlds. Thereby, the contention that applied possible-worlds semantics gives us reason to be realists about possible worlds is (further) undermined. (shrink)

We outline a theory of the cognitive role of belief in absolute necessity that is normative and intended to be metaphysically neutral. We take this theory to be unique in scope since it addresses simultaneously the questions of how such belief is (properly) acquired and of how it is (properly) manifest. The acquisition and manifestation conditions for belief in absolute necessity are given univocally, in terms of complex higher-order attitudes involving two distinct kinds of supposition (A-supposing and C-supposing). It is (...) subsequently argued that the proposed acquisition and manifestation conditions are rationally interdependent, and that such harmony affords explanations of connections between different facets of belief in necessity that otherwise remain mysterious. (shrink)

Are there nonexistent objects, i.e., objects that do not exist? Some examples often cited are: Zeus, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes, Vulcan (the hypothetical planet postulated by the 19th century astronomer Le Verrier), the perpetual motion machine, the golden mountain, the fountain of youth, the round square, etc. Some important philosophers have thought that the very concept of a nonexistent object is contradictory (Hume) or logically ill-formed (Kant, Frege), while others (Leibniz, Meinong, the Russell of Principles of Mathematics) have embraced it wholeheartedly. (...) This entry is an examination of the many questions which arise in connection with the view that there are nonexistent objects. The following are particularly salient: What reasons are there (if any) for thinking that there are nonexistent objects? If there are nonexistent objects, then what kind of objects are they? How can they be characterized? Is it possible to provide a consistent theory of nonexistent objects? What is the explanatory force of a consistent theory of nonexistent objects (if such a thing is possible)? (shrink)

It is a venerable slogan due to David Hume, and inherited by the empiricist tradition, that the impossible cannot be believed, or even conceived. In Positivismus und Realismus, Moritz Schlick claimed that, while the merely practically impossible is still conceivable, the logically impossible, such as an explicit inconsistency, is simply unthinkable. -/- An opposite philosophical tradition, however, maintains that inconsistencies and logical impossibilities are thinkable, and sometimes believable, too. In the Science of Logic, Hegel already complained against “one of the (...) fundamental prejudices of logic as hitherto understood”, namely that “the contradictory cannot be imagined or thought” (Hegel 1931: 430). Our representational capabilities are not limited to the possible, for we appear to be able to imagine and describe also impossibilities — perhaps without being aware that they are impossible. -/- Such impossibilities and inconsistencies are what this entry is about... (shrink)

There is a list of desiderata that any good metaphysics of fictional entities should be able to fulfill. These desiderata are: 1) the nonexistence of fictional entities; 2) the causal inefficacy of suchentities;3)the incompleteness of such entities;4)the created character of such entities; 5) the actual possession by ficta of the narrated properties; 6) the unrevisable ascription to ficta of such properties; and 7) the necessary possession by ficta of such properties. (Im)possibilist metaphysics uncontroversially satisfy 1) and 2); Neo-Meinongian metaphysics satisfy (...) 1), 2), 3), 5), 6), and 7); artefactualist or creationist metaphysics uncontroversially satisfy 1), 2), 3), and 4). Another metaphysics is needed in order to satisfy all such desiderata. In this chapter Idevelop such a metaphysics, claiming that a Syncretistic metaphysics that combines Neo-Meinongianism with Artefactualism achieves this purpose. According to Syncretism, ficta are hybrid entities individuated in terms of both a certain makebelieve narrative process and the set of properties that one such narration mobilizes. Toward the end of the chapter I consider some possible criticisms to this approach: its non-intuitiveness; ficta’s unnecessary proliferation; and troubles with creationism of any sort. (shrink)

[Draft substantially revised, September 2021] David Lewis acclimated us to talk of “nonactual concreta that exist,” regarding talking donkeys and the like. I shall argue that this was not for the best, and try to normalize a way of describing them as “actual concreta that do not exist.” The basis of this is a defense of the Meinongian thesis “there are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects,” re: fictitious and illusory objects. I first formulate (...) the problem of negative existentials in a novel way, and discuss why this new version is more forceful against anti-Meinongians. Additional data is also pressed against anti-Meinongians--e.g., the truth of ‘Pegasus is imaginary’, and a reading of ‘There actually are illusory objects’ where it comes out true. The Meinongian, in contrast, easily and uniformly explains the same data, by allowing the existence Pegasus, pink elephants, and the like. But contra Meinong, these cases suggest that the nonexistent objects are mind-dependent objects, and I clarify and defend this suggestion from several objections. The resulting Meinongianism is thus “conservative” in that it merely acknowledges the sense in which there are mind-dependent objects, imaginary and illusory objects being prime examples. Of special note, the “ideology” is conservative as well in that the typical Meinongian jargon of “nuclear” or “encoded” properties is paraphrased away. New suggestions about the ontology of abstracta, mere possibilia, and impossibilia are sketched in light of this. Comparisons are also made with Thomasson, Crane, and McGinn, among others. (shrink)

Content disjunctivism is the view that veridical experience involves contents and objects that differ from those of corresponding hallucinations. On one formulation of this view, we are aware of ordinary material things in our surroundings when we experience veridically, and we are aware of mere appearances when we hallucinate. This paper proposes a way of developing this view and offers some considerations in support. Central to the proposed regimentation will be a distinction between different notions of appearance. We distinguish between (...) the notion of something merely appearing to have a property and the notion of mere appearances, which are types of objects that we can refer to and be aware of. Mere appearances are not sense data or Meinongian non-existent objects but existing objects that do not have the properties that they appear to have. These notions of appearance will be elucidated, in particular by characterizing how they are involved in hallucination and illusion. I argue that the resulting view is supported by how our mental life seems to us when we experience our environment. (shrink)

The two main features of this thesis are (i) an account of contextualized (context indexed) counterfactuals, and (ii) a non-vacuist account of counterpossibles. Experience tells us that the truth of the counterfactual is contingent on what is meant by the antecedent, which in turn rests on what context is assumed to underlie its reading (intended meaning). On most conditional analyses, only the world of evaluation and the antecedent determine which worlds are relevant to determining the truth of a conditional, and (...) consequently what its truth value is. But that results in the underlying context being fixed, when evaluating distinct counterfactuals with the same antecedent on any single occasion, even when the context underlying the evaluation of each counterfactual may vary. Alternative approaches go some of the way toward resolving this inadequacy by appealing to a difference in the consequents associated with counterfactuals with the same antecedent. That is, in addition to the world of evaluation and the antecedent, the consequent contributes to the counterfactual’s evaluation. But these alternative approaches nevertheless give a single, determinate truth value to any single conditional (same antecedent and consequent), despite the possibility that this value may vary with context. My reply to these shortcomings (chapter 4) takes the form of an analysis of a language that makes appropriate explicit access to the intended context available. That is, I give an account of a contextualized counterfactual of the form ‘In context C: If it were the case that … , then it would be the case that …’. Although my proposal is largely based on Lewis’ (1973, 1981) analyses of counterfactuals (the logic VW and its ordering semantics), it does not require that any particular logic of counterfactuals should serve as its basis – rather, it is a general prescription for contextualizing a conditional language. The advantage of working with ordering semantics stems from existing results (which I apply and develop) concerning the properties of ordering frames that facilitate fashioning and implementing a notion of contextual information preservation. Analyses of counterfactuals, such as Lewis’ (1973), that cash out the truth of counterfactuals in terms of the corresponding material conditional’s truth at possible worlds result in all counterpossibles being evaluated as vacuously true. This is because antecedents of counterpossibles are not true at any possible world, by definition. Such vacuist analyses have already been identified and challenged by a number of authors. I join this critical front, and drawing on existing proposals, I develop an impossible world semantics for a non-vacuist account of counterpossibles (chapter 5), by modifying the same system and semantics that serve the basis of the contextualized account offered in chapter 4, i.e. Lewis’ (1986) ordering semantics for the logic VW. I critically evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of key conditions on the ordering of worlds on the extended domain and show that there is a sense in which all of Lewis’ analysis of mere counterfactuals can be preserved, whilst offering an analysis of counterpossibles that meets our intuitions. The first part of chapter 1 consists of an outline of the usefulness of impossible worlds across philosophical analyses and logic. That outline in conjunction with a critical evaluation of Lewis’ logical arguments in favour of vacuism in chapter 2, and his marvellous mountain argument against impossible worlds in chapter 3, serves to motivate and justify the impossible world semantics for counterpossibles proposed in chapter 5. The second part of chapter 1 discusses the limitations that various conditional logics face when tasked to give an adequate treatment of the influence of context. That introductory discussion in conjunction with an overview of conditional logics and their various semantics in chapter 2 – which includes an in-depth exposition of Stalnaker-Lewis similarity semantics for counterfactuals – serves as the motivation and conceptual basis for the contextualized account of counterfactuals proposed in chapter 4. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to address once more the venerable problem of intentional identity, the problem of how different thoughts can be about the same thing even if this thing does not exist. First, I will try to show that antirealist approaches to this problem are doomed to fail. For they ultimately share a problematic assumption, namely that thinking about something involves identifying it. Second, I will claim that once one rejects this assumption and holds instead that thoughts are (...) constituted either by what they are about, their intentional objects, or by what determines their proposition-like intentional contents, one can address the problem of intentional identity in a different way. One can indeed provide a new solution to it that basically relies on two factors: a) what sort of metaphysical nature intentional objects effectively possess, once they are conceived as schematic objects à la Crane (2001, 2013); b) whether such objects really belong to the overall ontological inventory of what there is. According to this solution, two thoughts are about the same nonexistent intentional object iff i) that object satisfies the identity criterion for objects of that metaphysical kind and ii) objects of that kind belong to the overall ontological inventory of what there is, independently of whether they exist (in a suitable first-order sense of existence). As such, this solution is neither realist nor antirealist: only if condition ii) is satisfied, different thoughts can be about the same nonexistent intentionale; otherwise, they are simply constituted by the same intentional content (provided that this content is not equated with that intentionale). Third, armed with this solution, I will hold that one can find a suitable treatment of the specific and related problem of whether different people may mock-think about the same thing, even if there really is no such thing. Finally, I will try to show that this treatment can be also applied to the case in which different thoughts are, according to phenomenology, about the same intentionale and yet this intentionale is of a kind such that there really are no things of that kind. For in this case, such thoughts are about the same intentionale only fictionally. (shrink)

In this entry I present one of the most hotly debated issues in contemporary analytic philosophy regarding the nature of fictional entities and the motivations that might be adduced for and against positing them into our ontology. The entry is divided in two parts. In the first part I offer an overview of the main accounts of the metaphysics of fictional entities according to three standard realist views, fictional Meinongianism, fictional possibilism and fictional creationism. In the second part I describe (...) two main kinds of arguments for or against positing fictional entities into our ontology. The first kind is traditionally inspired by the linguistic data coming from our talk about fictional characters. The second kind is more recent and it builds on genuine ontological considerations. (shrink)

In (1959), Carnap famously attacked Heidegger for having constructed an insane metaphysics based on a misconception of both the logical form and the semantics of ordinary language. In what follows, it will be argued that, once one appropriately (i.e., in a Russellian fashion) reads Heidegger’s famous sentence that should paradigmatically exemplify such a misconception, i.e., “the nothing nothings”, there is nothing either logically or semantically wrong with it. The real controversy as to how that sentence has to be evaluated—not as (...) to its meaning but as to its truth—lies at the metaphysico- ontological level. For in order for the sentence to be true one has to endorse an ontology of impossibilia and Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles. (shrink)

Fictional realism allows direct reference theorists to provide a straightfor- ward analysis of the semantics of fictional discourse by admitting into their ontology a set of objects (ficta) that serve as the referents of fictional names. Ficta may be modeled using an axiomatic object theory, but actualist interpretations of the formalism have been the subject of recent objections. In this paper, I provide an interpretation of object theory’s formalism that is consistent with actualism and avoids these objections. Drawing on insights (...) from an actualist semantics for quantified modal logic, a central point in my proposal is to interpret ficta as contingently nonconcrete objects. (shrink)

Artifactualism about fictional characters, positing Harry Potter as an abstract artifact created by J. K. Rowling, has been criticized on the grounds that the idea of creating such objects is mysterious and problematic. In the light of such qualms, it is worth homing in on an argument in favor of artifactualism, showing that it is the best way to include the likes of Harry Potter in our ontology precisely because it incorporates authorial creation. To that end, I will be exploring (...) Kripke’s fleeting remarks in the Addenda to his “Naming and Necessity” lectures about expressions like ‘unicorn’ and ‘Harry Potter’. Elsewhere, Kripke motivates artifactualism by suggesting that incorporating authorial creation (as artifactualism does) is a move that is intuitive and natural; but beyond this, he doesn’t provide any arguments in favor of such a move. My purpose in this paper is to construct such an argument based on considerations about Kripke’s general view about proper names, in particular, his seminal causal-historical chain account of reference determination, and its consequences for fictional names as well as nonfictional names without bearers such as ‘Vulcan’. (shrink)

World semantics for relevant logics include so-called non-normal or impossible worlds providing model-theoretic counterexamples to such irrelevant entailments as (A ∧ ¬A) → B, A → (B∨¬B), or A → (B → B). Some well-known views interpret non-normal worlds as information states. If so, they can plausibly model our ability of conceiving or representing logical impossibilities. The phenomenon is explored by combining a formal setting with philosophical discussion. I take Priest’s basic relevant logic N4 and extend it, on the syntactic (...) side, with a representation operator, (R), and on the semantic side, with particularly anarchic non-normal worlds. This combination easily invalidates unwelcome “logical omniscience” in- ferences of standard epistemic logic, such as belief-consistency and closure under entailment. Some open questions are then raised on the best strategies to regiment (R) in order to express more vertebrate kinds of conceivability. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine how any domain of Meinongian objects can be structured by a special kind of mereology. The basic definition of this mereology is the following: an object is part of another iff every characteristic property of the former is also a characteristic property of the latter. I will show that this kind of mereology ends up being very powerful for dealing with Meinongian objects. Mereological sums and products are not restricted in any way (...) in a domain of Meinongian objects: there is a sum and a product for any pair of Meinongian objects. With the mereological operations of sum, product and complement, and two special Meinongian objects, we can define a full boolean algebra on Meinongian objects. Moreover, this kind of mereology is atomic and extensional: an atom is a Meinongian object having just one characteristic property and two objects are identical iff the same atoms are parts of both of them. A Meinongian object can finally be defined in mereological terms as the sum of the atoms of its characteristic properties. (shrink)

The question whether natural language permits quantification over intentional objects as the ‘nonexistent’ objects of thought is the topic of a major philosophical controversy, as is the status of intentional objects as such. This paper will argue that natural language does reflect a particular notion of intentional object and in particular that certain types of natural language constructions (generally disregarded in the philosophical literature) cannot be analysed without positing intentional objects. At the same time, those intentional objects do not come (...) for free; rather they are strictly dependent on intentional acts that generally need to have a presence, in one way or another, in the semantic structure of the sentence. (shrink)

Modal realists face a puzzle. For modal realism to be justified, modal realists need to be able to give a successful reduction of modality. A simple argument, however, appears to show that the reduction they propose fails. In order to defend the claim that modal realism is justified, modal realists therefore need to either show that this argument fails, or show that modal realists can give another reduction of modality that is successful. I argue that modal realists cannot do either (...) of these things and that, as a result, modal realism is unjustified and should be rejected. (shrink)