Lexicon of Arguments

 

Schwarz I 226
Necessity a posteriori/Jackson/Schwarz: follow a priori from contingent truths about the current situation. (Lewis 1994b⁽¹⁾,296f,2002b⁽²⁾, Jackson 1998a⁽³⁾: 56 86).
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Stalnaker I 18
Necessity a posteriori/Jackson: necessity a posteriori is a result of relatively superficial linguistic facts. It comes from an optional descriptive semantics which randomly characterizes natural languages: a mechanism to determine speakers.
Thesis: there could also be languages without a fixed reference, which even tells to a certain extent how things are, namely without necessary truths a posteriori.
>Necessity a posteriori, >Reference, cf. >Reference semantics.
StalnakerVsJackson: however, if the reference-defining mechanisms are part of the meta-semantic history, they are not optional. They are part of the representation of what makes the fact that our utterances and internal states can have any representative properties at all. Necessary a posteriori truths are a feature of our intentionality.
Two-dimensional semantics/Stalnaker: two-dimensional semantics can show how the possible and the truth interact, i.e. to separate semantic from factual questions in the context.
>Two-dimensional semantics.
I 19
But it does not provide a context-free canonical language, in which we can give a neutral representation of the possibility space.
>Context.


1. David Lewis [1994b]: “Reduction of Mind”. In Samuel Guttenplan (Hg.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Blackwell, 412–431
2. David Lewis [2002b]: “Tharp’s Third Theorem”. Analysis, 62: 95–97
3. Frank Jackson [1998a]: From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press.