TY - JOUR AU - Bochner, Gregory PY - 2019/07/19 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Three-Dimensional Semantics JF - Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung JA - SuB VL - 13 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - 10.18148/sub/2009.v13i1.499 UR - https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/499 SP - 77-92 AB - <p>How can identity sentences involving distinct names be informative? Any theory of names facing the <em>problem of informativity</em> will need to appeal to descriptions. The crucial question is: <em>at which level</em> do descriptions play a role? Kripke showed that descriptions neither constitute nor fix the semantic contents of names. At the same time, his Millian views imply the problematic existence of <em>modal illusions</em>: some necessary truths are knowable only aposteriori <em>even though</em> there is no possible world in which they don’t hold. I sketch a new, metasemantic strategy that purports to avoid modal illusions within a referentialist framework: the relevant descriptions describe not extensions (descriptivism), not intensions (twodimensionalism), but names themselves (three-dimensionalism).</p> ER -