On 'Actually' and 'dthat': truth-conditional differences in possible worlds semantics

Although possible worlds semantics is a powerful tool to represent the semantic properties of natural language sentences, it has been often argued that it is too coarse: with the tools that pos- sible worlds semantics puts at our disposal, any relevant semantic difference has to be a truth condition...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Martí, Genoveva, Martínez Fernández, José, 1969-
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/153584
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/153584
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Semàntica (Filosofia)
Veritat
Semantics (Philosophy)
Truth
Descripción
Sumario:Although possible worlds semantics is a powerful tool to represent the semantic properties of natural language sentences, it has been often argued that it is too coarse: with the tools that pos- sible worlds semantics puts at our disposal, any relevant semantic difference has to be a truth conditional difference representable as a difference in intension. A case that raises questions about the abil- ity of possible worlds semantics to make the appropriate discrim- inations is the distinction between rigidity and direct reference, an issue deeply connected to the representation of the behaviour of two operators: 'dthat' and 'actually'. Differences between the mode of operation of 'dthat' and 'actually' have been observed, but they have not been examined in depth. Our purpose is to explore systematically to what extent the observed differences be- tween the two operators have truth conditional consequences that are formally representable in possible worlds semantics.