Impossible individuals as necessarily empty individual concepts

Marie  Duzi; B.T.F. Jespersen; Daniela Glavaničová

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-53487-5_9

Impossible individuals as necessarily empty individual concepts

Marie Duzi^*, B.T.F. Jespersen, Daniela Glavaničová

^*Corresponding author for this work

OFR - Theoretical Philosophy

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

We talk about ‘impossible objects’ in many areas, ranging from empirical and non-empirical theories to the realm of fiction, myth and folklore: a mathematical pendulum, a perfect market, the set of all sets that are not members of themselves, Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, Pegasus, The Puss in the Boots, and so forth. This paper proposes a hyperintensional account of a special case of impossible objects, so-called ‘impossible individuals’. Our (broadly Fregean) proposal is to identify ‘impossible individuals’ with necessarily empty individual concepts. The main goal of the paper is to develop a method that enables us to discover inconsistencies in specifications of individual concepts and thus prove that such concepts could not possibly be matched by an extension (an individual). Furthermore, this approach allows for a fine-grained individuation of impossible individuals. Fine-graining will not be explored in the present paper, but its very possibility adds to the overall plausibility of the present account.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Logic in High Definition
Subtitle of host publication	Trends in Logical Semantics
Editors	Alessandro Giordani, Jacek Malinowski
Publisher	Springer
Pages	177-202
Number of pages	26
Edition	1
ISBN (Electronic)	978-3-030-53487-5
ISBN (Print)	978-3-030-53486-8, 978-3-030-53489-9
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53487-5_9
Publication status	Published - 2021

Publication series

Name	Trends in Logic
Publisher	Springer
Volume	56
ISSN (Print)	1572-6126
ISSN (Electronic)	2212-7313

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Marie Du?? and Bj?rn Jespersen were supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, project No. GA18-23891S, Hyperintensional Reasoning over Natural Language Texts. Daniela Glavani?ov? was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract no. APVV-17?0057 and by the VEGA grant No. 2/0117/19 Logic, Epistemology and Metaphysics of Fiction. We are grateful to members of the Department of Analytic Philosophy (Slovak Academy of Sciences) for comments on a previous version of this paper, in particular to Milo? Kosterec, Martin Vacek and Mari?n Zouhar. Versions of this paper were presented by Daniela Glavani?ov? at Trends in Logic, Milan, 24-27 September 2018; and Bj?rn Jespersen at OZSW 6th Conference, University of Twente, 9?10 November 2018, and Modal Metaphysics: Issues of the (Im)Possible VI, Bratislava, 2?4 August 2018.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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10.1007/978-3-030-53487-5_9

978-3-030-53487-5_9Final published version, 346 KBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

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title = "Impossible individuals as necessarily empty individual concepts",

abstract = "We talk about {\textquoteleft}impossible objects{\textquoteright} in many areas, ranging from empirical and non-empirical theories to the realm of fiction, myth and folklore: a mathematical pendulum, a perfect market, the set of all sets that are not members of themselves, Kafka{\textquoteright}s Gregor Samsa, Pegasus, The Puss in the Boots, and so forth. This paper proposes a hyperintensional account of a special case of impossible objects, so-called {\textquoteleft}impossible individuals{\textquoteright}. Our (broadly Fregean) proposal is to identify {\textquoteleft}impossible individuals{\textquoteright} with necessarily empty individual concepts. The main goal of the paper is to develop a method that enables us to discover inconsistencies in specifications of individual concepts and thus prove that such concepts could not possibly be matched by an extension (an individual). Furthermore, this approach allows for a fine-grained individuation of impossible individuals. Fine-graining will not be explored in the present paper, but its very possibility adds to the overall plausibility of the present account.",

author = "Marie Duzi and B.T.F. Jespersen and Daniela Glavani{\v c}ov{\'a}",

note = "Funding Information: Marie Du?? and Bj?rn Jespersen were supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, project No. GA18-23891S, Hyperintensional Reasoning over Natural Language Texts. Daniela Glavani?ov? was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract no. APVV-17?0057 and by the VEGA grant No. 2/0117/19 Logic, Epistemology and Metaphysics of Fiction. We are grateful to members of the Department of Analytic Philosophy (Slovak Academy of Sciences) for comments on a previous version of this paper, in particular to Milo? Kosterec, Martin Vacek and Mari?n Zouhar. Versions of this paper were presented by Daniela Glavani?ov? at Trends in Logic, Milan, 24-27 September 2018; and Bj?rn Jespersen at OZSW 6th Conference, University of Twente, 9?10 November 2018, and Modal Metaphysics: Issues of the (Im)Possible VI, Bratislava, 2?4 August 2018. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.",

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Impossible individuals as necessarily empty individual concepts. / Duzi, Marie ; Jespersen, B.T.F.; Glavaničová, Daniela.
Logic in High Definition: Trends in Logical Semantics. ed. / Alessandro Giordani; Jacek Malinowski. 1. ed. Springer, 2021. p. 177-202 (Trends in Logic; Vol. 56).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › Academic › peer-review

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AU - Duzi, Marie

AU - Jespersen, B.T.F.

AU - Glavaničová, Daniela

N1 - Funding Information: Marie Du?? and Bj?rn Jespersen were supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, project No. GA18-23891S, Hyperintensional Reasoning over Natural Language Texts. Daniela Glavani?ov? was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract no. APVV-17?0057 and by the VEGA grant No. 2/0117/19 Logic, Epistemology and Metaphysics of Fiction. We are grateful to members of the Department of Analytic Philosophy (Slovak Academy of Sciences) for comments on a previous version of this paper, in particular to Milo? Kosterec, Martin Vacek and Mari?n Zouhar. Versions of this paper were presented by Daniela Glavani?ov? at Trends in Logic, Milan, 24-27 September 2018; and Bj?rn Jespersen at OZSW 6th Conference, University of Twente, 9?10 November 2018, and Modal Metaphysics: Issues of the (Im)Possible VI, Bratislava, 2?4 August 2018. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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N2 - We talk about ‘impossible objects’ in many areas, ranging from empirical and non-empirical theories to the realm of fiction, myth and folklore: a mathematical pendulum, a perfect market, the set of all sets that are not members of themselves, Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, Pegasus, The Puss in the Boots, and so forth. This paper proposes a hyperintensional account of a special case of impossible objects, so-called ‘impossible individuals’. Our (broadly Fregean) proposal is to identify ‘impossible individuals’ with necessarily empty individual concepts. The main goal of the paper is to develop a method that enables us to discover inconsistencies in specifications of individual concepts and thus prove that such concepts could not possibly be matched by an extension (an individual). Furthermore, this approach allows for a fine-grained individuation of impossible individuals. Fine-graining will not be explored in the present paper, but its very possibility adds to the overall plausibility of the present account.

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SN - 978-3-030-53489-9

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PB - Springer

ER -

Impossible individuals as necessarily empty individual concepts

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