Two-dimensionalism

Abstract: logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.'1 This paper is an attempt to follow Russell's advice by using a puzzle about the contingent a priori to test and ex plore certain theories of reference and modality. No one could claim that the puzzle is of any great philosophical importance by itself, but to understand it, one has to get clear about certain aspects of the theory of reference; and to solve it, one has to think a little more deeply than one is perhaps accustomed about what it means to say that a statement is contingent or necessary. The idea that there might be truths which are both contingent and a priori was thrown up by Kripke in the course of his celebrated discussion of the modal and epistemic categories to which the notions of the contingent and the a priori respectively belong.2 There has been some discussion of the idea since Kripke raised it, all of it based upon the assumption that the existence of a statement which is both contingent and a priori would constitute an in tolerable paradox. For example, Michael Dummett has argued that the fact that Kripke's views on reference and modality appear to lead to the recogni tion of the existence of contingent a priori truths shows that something must be wrong with those views.20 In other recent discussions, attempts are made to dissolve the puzzle by showing that, properly understood, the problematical statements are not both contingent and a priori. There seem to me to be clear logical and semantical errors in all of these attempts, but more importantly, their starting point seems incorrect. There is no paradox in the existence of statements which are both contingent and a priori, at least, not in the sense in which the problematical statements may be claimed to be con tingent. There are two quite different conceptions of what it is for a statement to be contingent; statements may be, as we might say, deeply contingent or superficially contingent. Whether a statement is deeply contingent depends upon what makes it true; whether a statement is superficially contingent depends upon how it embeds inside the scope of modal operators. While it would be intolerable for there to be a statement which is both knowable a priori and deeply contingent, I shall try to show that there is nothing par ticularly perplexing about the existence of a statement which is both

Abstract: We often decide whether a state of affairs is possible (impossible) by trying to mentally depict a scenario (using words, images, etc.) where the state in question obtains (or fails to obtain). These mental acts (broadly thought of as ‘conceiving’) seem to provide us with an epistemic route to the space of possibilities. The problem this raises is whether conceivability judgments provide justification-conferring grounds for the ensuing possibility-claims (call this the ‘conceivability thesis’). Although the question has a long history, contemporary interest in it was, to a large extent, prompted by Kripke's utilization of modal intuitions in the course of propounding certain influential theses in the philosophy of language and mind. The interest has been given a further boost by the recent two-dimensional approach to the Kripkean framework. In this paper, I begin by providing a detailed examination of a most recent attempt (due to Chalmers) to defend the thesis and argue that it is unsuccessful. This is f...

Abstract: A Word about Notation ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 PART ONE: THE REVOLT AGAINST DESCRIPTIVISM 5 CHAPTER 1: The Traditional Descriptivist Picture 7 CHAPTER 2: Attack on the Traditional Picture Proper Names, Non-Descriptionality, and Rigid Designation 14 PART TWO: DESCRIPTIVIST RESISTANCE: THE ORIGINS OF AMBITIOUS TWO-DIMENSIONALISM 33 CHAPTER 3: Reasons for Resistance and the Strategy for Descriptivist Revival 35 CHAPTER 4: Roots of Two-Dimensionalism in Kaplan and Kripke 43 CHAPTER 5: Stalnaker's Two-Dimensionalist Model of Discourse 84 CHAPTER 6: The Early Two-Dimensionalist Semantics of Davies and Humberstone 106 PART THREE: AMBITIOUS TWO-DIMENSIONALISM 131 CHAPTER 7: Strong and Weak Two-Dimensionalism 133 CHAPTER 8: Jackson's Strong Two-Dimensionalist Program 149 CHAPTER 9: Chalmers's Two-Dimensionalist Defense of Zombies 194 CHAPTER 10: Critique of Ambitious Two-Dimensionalism 267 PART FOUR: THE WAY FORWARD 327 CHAPTER 11: Positive Nondescriptivism 329 Index 355

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Anaphoric reference and context sets 3. Bad intensions 4. The foundations of two-dimensional semantics 5. Reference, contingency, and the two-dimensional framework 6. Letter to Martin Davies 7. Two-dimensionalism: a neo-Fregean interpretation 8. Phenomenal belief and phenomenal concepts 9. Moral rationalism 10. Indexical concepts 11. Keeping track of objects in conversation 12. Kripke, the necessary aposteriori, and the two-dimensionalist heresy 13. Assertion revisited: on the interpretation of two-dimensional modal semantics 14. Two-dimenisonalisma and Kripkean A Posteriori Necessity 15. Illusions of possibility