Nathan Salmón

An externalist account of exportation (inferring /de re/ belief from /de dicto/) is outlined. Kripke famously argued in /Naming and Necessity/ (1972) for his controversial thesis concerning certain English sentences that they are contingent /a priori/, in the derivative sense that the proposition semantically expressed is metaphysically contingent yet knowable /a priori/. Kripke also demonstrated that unrestricted exportation in attributions of belief is invalid. It is argued that these conclusions are, nearly enough, inconsistent. Kripke’s argument that belief exportation must be restricted points to a fallacy in his argument that his putative examples of the contingent /a priori/ are genuinely /a priori/.

An alternative to the classical Stalnaker-Lewis account of subjunctive conditionals is outlined. A distinction is drawn between a basic notion of “wouldness” and a more full-bloodedly modal variant, each with its own logic. Previous philosophers have challenged the alleged vacuity of counterpossibles using logico-mathematically impossible worlds. Here the vacuity thesis as well as other orthodox alleged logical principles are challenged instead through consideration of a logico-mathematically possible world. The impossible-world theorist’s Strangeness of Impossibility Condition is also challenged using the same logico-mathematically possible world. The dogma that the truth-condition of a subjunctive invokes the antecedent worlds sufficiently “closest” to (most like) the actual world is also challenged through consideration of the same logico-mathematically possible world. The dogma is a variation on Lewis’s counterpart theory.