Objects and Modalities: A Study in the Semantics of Modal Logic (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science)

This book develops a novel generalization of possible world semantics, called ‘world line semantics’, which recognizes worlds and links between world-bound objects (world lines) as mutually independent aspects of modal semantics. Addressing a wide range of questions vital for contemporary debates in logic and philosophy of language and offering new tools for theoretical linguistics and knowledge representation, the book proposes a radically new paradigm in modal semantics. This framework is motivated philosophically, viewing a structure of world lines as a precondition of modal talk. The author provides a uniform analysis of quantification over individuals (physical objects) and objects of thought (intentional objects). The semantic account of what it means to speak of intentional objects throws new light on accounts of intentionality and singular thought in the philosophy of mind and offers novel insights into the semantics of intensional transitive verbs.

Since 2009, Tero Tulenheimo has been an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Lille. He defended his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Helsinki in 2004. His research interests are in logic, philosophy of language, ontology, and epistemology. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed scientific articles in international journals and edited books.