Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Truth-theoretic semantics had its genesis in concerns that discounted attitude contexts, fictional discourse and the like. Finding satisfactory ways to re-incorporate these elements in an extensionalist framework is difficult, the resources of Kripkean modal semantics notwithstanding.

In this talk, we consider how extensionalist semantics might have developed if intensional idioms and fictional discourse had been a key issue for foundational thinkers like Tarski, or if Kripke had focused at the outset on that-clauses more generally, and not just the rather special case of 'it is possible that'.

Taking its cue from insights of Tarski and Kripke, the result is a semantic picture that remains strikingly classical, but yields a natural account of attitude contexts, that-clauses generally, and might easily accommodate fictional discourse as well. If something like the account that emerges is correct, several famous puzzles would find resolution.