Hyperintensional metaphysics

• Published in: Philosophical studies Vol. 171; no. 1; pp. 149 - 160
• Main Author: Nolan, Daniel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01-10-2014; Springer Netherlands
• Subjects: A priori knowledge; Contrafactuals; Education; Epistemology; Ethics; Intensionality; Metaphysics; Modal realism; Ontological essence; Phenomena; Philosophy; Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Mind; Predicates; Truth value; Hyperintensionality; Intensionality; Metaphysics; Impossible worlds
• ISSN: 0031-8116; 1573-0883
• DOI: 10.1007/s11098-013-0251-2

In the last few decades of the twentieth century there was a revolution in metaphysics: the intensional revolution. Many metaphysicians rejected the doctrine, associated with Quine and Davidson, that extensional analyses and theoretical resources were the only acceptable ones. Metaphysicians embraced tools like modal and counterfactual analyses, claims of modal and counterfactual dependence, and entities such as possible worlds and intensionally individuated properties and relations. The twenty-first century is seeing a hypterintensional revolution. Theoretical tools in common use carve more finely than by necessary equivalence: two pieces of language can apply to the same entities across all possible worlds but not be equivalent; thoughts can be necessarily equivalent in truth value but not synonymous. This paper argues that hyperintensional resources are valuable in metaphysics outside theories of representation, and discusses some promising areas of hyperintensional metaphysics.