Lexicon of Arguments

 

Hintikka I 37
Non-Existential Objects/Unrealized Possibilities/HintikkaVsQuine/Hintikka: Thesis: there are non-existent objects, namely in the actual world.
>Possibilia, >Actual world, >Actuality, >Actualism.
HintikkaVsQuine: the philosophers who reject them have thought too strongly in syntactic paths.
>Syntax.
Hintikka: Thesis: one has to answer the question rather semantically (model-theoretically).
>Semantics, >Model Theory.
Fiction/Ryle: test: Does the paraphrase apply?
>Fictions, >G. Ryle.
Terence ParsonsVsRyle: Ryle's test fails in cases like e.g. "Mr. Pickwick is a fiction".
HintikkaVsParsons: the relevance of the criterion is questionable at all.
>Criteria, >Relevance.
I 38
Ontology/Language/Linguistic/HintikkaVsRyle: how should linguistic questions such as paraphrasability make decisions about ontological status?
Solution/Hintikka: for the question whether there are non-existent objects: model theory.
E.g. Puccini's Tosca: here, it is about whether the soldiers have bullets in their rifle barrels.
N.B.: even if they had some, these would be just fictional ones!
Model theory/Hintikka: model theory provides a serious answer. ((s) is "true in the model", means, it is true in the story that the bullets are there).
HintikkaVsParsons: one should not argue too strongly syntactically, i.e. not merely ask what conclusions can be drawn and which cannot.
>Conclusions.
Acceptance/Acceptability/Inferences/Hintikka: asking for the acceptability of inferences and of language and intuitions is syntactic.
>Acceptability, >Inferences.
Singular terms/ontological obligation/existence/Parsons: Parsons argues that the use of singular terms obliges us to an existential generalization. And so on a speaker. That is, it is a commitment to an inference.
>Singular terms, >Ontological commitment.
HintikkaVsParsons.