UC Irvine

Chapter 1 concerns issues in the construction of formal models of intensional notions. Intensional notions may be treated as modal operators or as predicates. Halbach and Welch (2009) have proposed a new formal technique to reduce the necessity predicate to an operator, demonstrating that the two methods are ultimately compatible. I show that the monotonicity constraint in the Halbach-Welch technique fails for almost all possible-worlds theories of knowledge. Since the monotonicity constraint is an important element of the proof of the Halbach-Welch rapprochement strategy in the case of necessity, the present results show that the most obvious way of emulating this strategy in the epistemic setting fail.

In Chapter 2, I reconstruct and reconsider Hintikka’s (1969) innovative operator approach to the logic of perception. I use a modal operator and a method of many-sorted substitutional quantification to formalize the notion of perceptual reference. I assimilate Hintikka’s logic to present-day norms of formal logic and I explore Hintikka’s treatment of quantification in the context of his overarching thesis that the possible-worlds theory of intensionality eo ipso provides a theory of mental intentionality. My reconstruction makes us well-posed to consider what is true about Hintikka’s philosophical claims, but also to see some of their decisive limitations.

In Chapter 3, I construct a framework for an adverbialist theory of phenomenal intentionality. I first pose the question: what is the logic of adverbial modification in the setting of phenomenal consciousness? I argue from tools in formal semantics that the logic is one of events, rather than a logic of intensionality. I then argue that the event adverbialist can offer elegant regimentations of crucial distinctions that give the event adverbialist purchase on phenomenal intentionality. This chapter is understood as the other side of the coin from chapter 2 above. There, I reconstruct an account of intentional reference; here, I give a novel account of a structure that determines the ways in which acts are directed toward their (putative) reference.