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  • Book
  • © 1990

Overview

Authors:
  1. M. J. Cresswell

    1. Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
      University of Massachusettes at Amherst, USA

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Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy (SLAP, volume 41)

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Table of contents (16 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Multiple Indexing

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
      Download chapter PDF

    2. A Basic Intensional Language

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 1-16

    3. ‘Now’ and ‘Then’

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 17-33

    4. ‘Actually’

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 34-46

    5. Indices and World Variables

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 47-62

    6. Mediated Relations

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 63-75

    7. A Second-Order Treatment

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 76-92

  3. Ontological Commitment

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 93-93
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    2. Possibilist Quantification

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 95-110

    3. Possibilities

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 111-129

    4. Intersentential Operators

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 130-141

    5. Substitutional Quantification

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 142-155

    6. Modality and Supervenience

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 156-172

    7. Counterpart Theory

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 173-193

  4. Indexical Quantification

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 195-195
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    2. Generalized Quantifiers

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 197-212

    3. Quantifiers as Indexical Operators

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 213-227

    4. Time and World Quantifiers

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 228-241

    5. Context and Indices

      • M. J. Cresswell
      Pages 242-259
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Keywords

About this book

In ordinary discourse we appear to ta1k about many things that have seemed mysterious to philosophers. We say that there has been a hitch in our arrangements or that the solution to the problem required us to examine all the probable outcomes of our action. So it would seem that we speak as if in addition to eloeks, mountains, queens and grains of sand there are hitches, arrangements, solutions, probiems, and probable outcomes. It is not immediately obvious when we must take such ta1k as really assuming that there are such to develop tests for things, and one of the tasks in this book is discerning what has eome to be called ontological commitment, in naturallanguage. Among the entities that natural language appears to make reference to are those connected with temporal and modal discourse, times, possibilities, and so on. Such entities play a crueial role in the kind of semantieal theories that I and others have defended over many years. These theories are based on the idea that an essential part of the meaning of a sentence is constituted by the conditions under whieh that sentenee is true. To know what a sentence says is to know what the world would have to be !ike for that sentence to be true.

Reviews

`... I heartily recommend it to any philosopher of language interested in the issues. [...] Logicians, of course, will want to savour the whole thing.'
Australian Journal of Philosophy, 71:3 (1993)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

    M. J. Cresswell

  • University of Massachusettes at Amherst, USA

    M. J. Cresswell

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