Transparent quantification into hyperintensional objectual attitudes

Marie Duží

Bjørn Jespersen

pp. 635-677

in: Bjørn Jespersen, Marie Duží (eds), Hyperintensionality, Synthese 192 (3), 2015.

Abstract

We demonstrate how to validly quantify into hyperintensional contexts involving non-propositional attitudes like seeking, solving, calculating, worshipping, and wanting to become. We describe and apply a typed extensional logic of hyperintensions that preserves compositionality of meaning, referential transparency and substitutivity of identicals also in hyperintensional attitude contexts. We specify and prove rules for quantifying into hyperintensional contexts. These rules presuppose a rigorous method for substituting variables into hyperintensional contexts, and the method will be described. We prove the following. First, it is always valid to quantify into hyperintensional attitude contexts and over hyperintensional entities. Second, factive empirical attitudes (e.g. finding the site of Troy) validate, furthermore, quantifying over intensions and extensions, and so do non-factive attitudes, both empirical and non-empirical (e.g. calculating the last decimal of the expansion of (pi )), provided the entity to be quantified over exists. We focus mainly on mathematical attitudes, because they are uncontroversially hyperintensional.