Transcendental phenomenology and possible worlds semantics

✍ Scribed by Peter Hutcheson

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1987
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 988 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-9848
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00137884

✦ Synopsis

Are transcendental phenomenology and possible worlds semantics, two seemingly disparate, perhaps even incompatible philosophical traditions, actually complementary? Have two well-known representatives of each tradition, J.N. Mohanty and J. Hintikka, misinterpreted the other's philosophical "program" in such a way that they did not recognize the complementarity? Charles Harvey 1 has recently argued that the answer to both questions is "yes." Here I intend to argue that the answer to the first is unclear, whereas the answer to the second is "no." Mohanty (at least) rightly cites fundamental differences between transcendental phenomenology and possible worlds semantics.