Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS
Are Intensions Necessary? Sense as the Construction of Reference
By Almerindo Ojeda
It seems that PEST can overcome the difficulties that have hitherto plagued the extensional theory of meaning. As we have seen in the course of this paper, PEST can account for the variable informativeness of identity statements, the failure of substitution in opaque contexts, the compositional interpretation of modal verbs and adverbs, the non-trivial nature of counterfactuals, and the non-synonymy of vacuous predicates.
In fact, there are instances in which the accounts of these facts provided by PEST are actually better than the ones provided by possible-worlds semantics. For one thing, PEST accounts are by and large simpler, less abstract, and more intuitive than those issuing from the intensional account.
Source: Semantics Archive
Posted by Tony Marmo
at 08:08 GMT
Updated: Tuesday, 8 November 2005 08:09 GMT
