Avoiding Russell-Kaplan Paradoxes: Worlds and Propositions Set Free∗ (DRAFT)

The authors first address two paradoxes in the theory of possible worlds and propositions stemming from Russell and Kaplan and show that these paradoxes don’t affect the object-theoretic analysis of worlds and propositions. However, Kit Fine has formulated an object-theoretic version of Kaplan’s paradox that threatens to show that object theory is, after all, no better off. The initial, most straightforward version of the paradox is blocked by theoretical restrictions specific to object theory, but the paradox can be revised so as to comport with these restrictions by redefining one of the terms in an essential premise. The authors then argue that the premise that results given the new definition is entirely implausible if propositions are understood, as they are in object theory, to be fine-grained intensional entities rather than sets of possible worlds. Object theory, therefore, can block the revised paradox as well. ∗Copyright c © 2012 by Otávio Bueno, Christopher Menzel, and Edward N. Zalta. The second and third authors would like to express our gratitude to Hannes Leitgeb and the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP), where both authors spent time as visiting fellows during the 2011–12 academic year, and to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, for its support of the MCMP. O. BUENO, C. MENZEL, AND E. ZALTA 2