A logic for epistemic two-dimensional semantics

Peter Fritz

pp. 1753-1770

in: Peter Pagin, Robert van Rooij, Jonas Åkerman (eds), Philosophy of language and mind, Synthese 190 (10), 2013.

Abstract

Epistemic two-dimensional semantics is a theory in the philosophy of language that provides an account of meaning which is sensitive to the distinction between necessity and apriority. While this theory is usually presented in an informal manner, I take some steps in formalizing it in this paper. To do so, I define a semantics for a propositional modal logic with operators for the modalities of necessity, actuality, and apriority that captures the relevant ideas of epistemic two-dimensional semantics. I also describe some properties of the logic that are interesting from a philosophical perspective, and apply it to the so-called nesting problem.