Title:
Illusions of Hyperintensionality and the Semantics of Function Symbols
Abstract:
Kit Fine’s “Essence and Modality” played a key role in the development of hyperintensional metaphysics, where necessary equivalence is insufficient for the identity of propositions, properties, and relations. Careful attention to the semantics of function symbols shows how the intuitive judgments on which Fine relies may be the outputs of heuristics that give inconsistent results in analogous cases, and so are unreliable. Fine has recently responded to this critique. The talk will take the dialectic further.