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Safety, the Preface Paradox and Possible Worlds Semantics

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Abstract

This paper contains an argument to the effect that possible worlds semantics renders semantic knowledge impossible, no matter what ontological interpretation is given to possible worlds. The essential contention made is that possible worlds semantic knowledge is unsafe and this is shown by a parallel with the preface paradox.

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Notes

  1. See Lewis (1970), Cresswell (1978), (1988) and Copeland (2002).

  2. We can see that that this is the proper interpretation of semantic understanding according to possible worlds semantics in terms of Stalnaker’s view that possible worlds are maximal properties and we shall examine property maximalism in greater detail in Sect. 2.2. With respect to this view he explains that “…we understand what a particular property is in terms of the range of possible situations in which it would be exemplified (2011, 110).” If worlds are properties and meanings are sets of possible worlds, then it is clear that understandings meanings amounts to understanding the range of possibilities that constitute such meanings. More generally, that this is the correct understanding of the possible worlds semantics account of sentence meaning can be seen in Copeland (2002).

  3. See Melia (2003) on the varieties of interpretations of possible worlds. See Shaffer and Morris (2006) concerning the self-refuting nature of PWS.

  4. Grasping is intended to connote a state sufficient to entail competence and which allows for various propositional attitudes to be had towards the state in question. As such, the natural interpretation to give to grasping is that it is a form of understanding. See Shaffer and Morris (2010) for more about this issue, especially as it relates to linguistic ersatzism.

  5. Compare Popper (1959, 119–120).

  6. See Adams (1974) for an example of this view.

  7. See Stalnaker (1976, 2011) and Forrester (1986) for examples of this view.

  8. See Lewis (1986) for the canonical presentation and defense of this view.

  9. One might be argue that the ersatzer need not identify meanings with possible worlds understood as sets of sentences and then one might suggest that the ersatzer should simply regard these constructions as useful fictions or models of actual meanings. However, this tactic is not really open to the ersatzer. First, either the ersatzer who accepts possible world semantics identifies meanings with possible worlds, or that view is simply not a version of possible world semantics. Second, without the identification of possible worlds with sets of sentences (maximal or otherwise), the ersatzer loses his metaphysical motivation. If such a theorist holds that the sets of sentences that characterize possible world semantics are merely useful fictions or models then the ersatzer cannot simultaneously reject realism about possible worlds while retaining realism about meaning.

  10. See Olin (2003, ch. 4).

  11. This observation has been leveraged into an argument in favor of safety in Shaffer (2017).

  12. Of course what is really known are the propositions expressed by these sentences. For the purposes of fidelity to typical presentations of the paradox we can ignore this little complication. See Shaffer (2018) for the oroginal presentation of the safety solution to the preface paradox.

  13. Notice that on PWS such knowledge must be extensional in order for this view to count as a form of possible worlds semantics. If it was intentsional, then semantic knowledge would be knowledge of some intensional entity that comprehends a set of possible worlds. Clearly that view is not PWS.

  14. See Hintikka (1983), Barwise and Perry (1983) and Stalnaker (1986).

  15. Again, see, for example, Stalnaker (2011, 11).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, CH 365, St. Cloud State University, 720 4th Ave. South, St. Cloud, MN, 56301, USA

    Michael J. Shaffer

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  1. Michael J. Shaffer
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Shaffer, M.J. Safety, the Preface Paradox and Possible Worlds Semantics. Axiomathes 29, 347–361 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-018-9413-3

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