On a Proposed Extension of Infinitary Logic

Timothy Williamson (Oxford) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium titled "On a Proposed Extension of Infinitary Logic". Abstract: In discussing ‘translation’ schemes between possibilist discourse about merely possible objects and actualist discourse that abjures such objects, Kit Fine proposed interpreting quantifiers over pluralities or sets of possibilia using infinite sequences of modal operators and actualist quantifiers. After explaining the philosophical background, the talk will concern the more technical problem of interpreting such infinite sequences of operators. Various proposals will be assessed. The only ones that work depend on postulating possibilia in the meta-language.