Hyperintensionality

Abstract

This chapter asks whether hyperintensionality is a genuine phenomenon, or rather, a feature to be explained away. It then focuses on the epistemic case, considering arguments from Stalnaker and Lewis which attempt to explain away hyperintensionality. The argument for a genuinely hyperintensional notion of content is subsequently considered. Having made the case for genuine hyperintensionality, the chapter turns to the granularity issue: how fine-grained are impossible worlds? This is one of the most difficult issues any theory of hyperintensionality faces. The focus then returns to the compositionality objection and it is argued that some accounts of impossible worlds deliver a fully compositional theory of meaning.