On the Essential Flatness of Possible Worlds

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to introduce and motivate a new semantic framework for modalities. The first part of the paper will be devoted to defending the claim that conventional possible worlds are ill-suited for the semantics of certain types of modal statements. We will see that the source of this expressive limitation comes from what will be dubbed “worldly flatness”, the fact that possible worlds don’t determine modal facts. It will be argued that some modalities are best understood as quantifiers over modal facts and that possible worlds semantics cannot achieve this. In the second part of the paper, I will present a new semantic framework that allows for such an understanding of modalities.