Knowing who occupies an office; purely contingent, necessary and impossible offices
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989100%3A27240%2F24%3A10254788" target="_blank" >RIV/61989100:27240/24:10254788 - isvavai.cz</a>
Alternative codes found
RIV/61989592:15410/24:73627023
Result on the web
<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-024-04596-x#citeas" target="_blank" >https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-024-04596-x#citeas</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04596-x" target="_blank" >10.1007/s11229-024-04596-x</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Knowing who occupies an office; purely contingent, necessary and impossible offices
Original language description
This paper examines different kinds of definite descriptions denoting purely contingent, necessary or impossible objects. The discourse about contingent/impossible/necessary objects can be organised in terms of rational questions to ask and answer relative to the modal profile of the entityin question. There are also limits on what it is rational to know about entities with this or that modal profile. We will also examine epistemic modalities; they are the kind of necessity and possibility that is determined by epistemic constraints related to knowledge or rationality. Definite descriptions denote so-called offices, roles, or things to be. We explicate these offices as partial functions from possible worlds to chronologies of objects of type alpha, where alpha is mostly the type of individuals. Our starting point is Prior's distinction between a 'weak' and 'strong' definite article 'the'. In both cases, the definite description refers to at most one object; yet, in the case of the weak 'the', the referred object can change over time, while in the case of the strong 'the', the object referred to by the definite description is the same forever, once the office has been occupied. The main result we present is the way how to obtain a Wh-knowledge about who or what plays a given role presented by a hyper-office, i.e. procedure producing an office. Another no less important result concerns the epistemic necessity of the impossibility of knowing who or what occupies the impossible office presented by a hyper-office.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>imp</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
10102 - Applied mathematics
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach
Others
Publication year
2024
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Synthese
ISSN
0039-7857
e-ISSN
1573-0964
Volume of the periodical
203
Issue of the periodical within the volume
6
Country of publishing house
NL - THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS
Number of pages
29
Pages from-to
2-30
UT code for WoS article
001243629900001
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85195667592