Semantics and truth relative to a world

Michael Glanzberg

pp. 281-307

in: Relative truth, Synthese 166 (2), 2009.

Abstract

This paper argues that relativity of truth to a world plays no significant role in empirical semantic theory, even as it is done in the model-theoretic tradition relying on intensional type theory. Some philosophical views of content provide an important notion of truth at a world, but they do not constrain the empirical domain of semantic theory in a way that makes this notion empirically significant. As an application of this conclusion, this paper shows that a potential motivation for relativism based on the relativity of truth to a world fails.