Abstract
A lightning fast summary of Yablo, Aboutness, cutting many corners in the interests of brevity. The emphasis is on “ways.” Substituting “ways for S to be true” in for “worlds in which S is true” improves a number of philosophical explanations. The subject matter of S is identified with S’s ways of holding in a world, or failing, as the case may be. S contains T iff T is implied by S, and T’s ways of being true (false) are implied by ways for S to be true (false); this kind of way-implication is the same as subject matter inclusion. S’s surplus content over T is explained as that portion of the content of S that is not about whether T. Subject matter is cast throughout as a full partner in meaning.
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Notes
“A proposition [already] asserts every proposition which follows from it” (Tractatus, 5.1.24).
Hempel (1960), 465.
The weakest such X is \(E\supset H\). (Bar-Hillel and Carnap (1953), 150.
As Jonathan Schaffer pointed out to me (Yablo 2016).
Lewis (2000).
Vogel (2014).
This is better, but still in the end not quite right.
Fuhrmann (1996).
Putnam (1958).
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Yablo, S. Precis of aboutness. Philos Stud 174, 771–777 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0755-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0755-7