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(whenever someone knows or believes anything he knows or also believes all its logical consequences)? One of the 'ideal' answers is that this rule theoretically holds independently of any idiosyncratic case of ignorance or insufficient information. But it has been persuasively shown that the correct answer depends on a given definition of what it means to understand what is known or believed. There is a difference between what is semantically presupposed by the encyclopedia and what is pragmatically presupposed in the process of interpretation of a text. To ask whether knowing that a given individual is a man also means knowing that he has two lungs depends on the quantificational depth of a sentence, that is, "the maximal complexity of the configuration of individuals considered in it at any time, measured by the numbers of individuals involved" (Hintikka, 1970:170). This refers us back to the notion of world structure of reference (see 8.4.4).
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14. When Hintikka (1969b) says that if I see a man without being sure whether he is John or Henry or somebody else and that nevertheless this man will be the same in every possible world because he is the man I see in this precise moment, our problem is solved. As my question is, Who is this man I am actually perceiving? his only essential property has already been established by my perspective on the world and by my material or empirical needs.
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15. Quoted apropos of my book A Theory of Semiotics (1976), in Teresa De Lauretis, "Semiosis Unlimited," Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 2, no. 2 (April 1977).
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16. One might object that it is untrue that a WN is accessible to W0 only when the essential properties in W0 are maintained. We can imagine a fantastic novel in which Richelieu is not French but a Spanish secret agent. As a matter of fact, it is also possible to imagine a story in which Richelieu is not French, not a Cardinal, did not live in the seventeenth century, and, furthermore, is not a man but a guinea pig. If this is a joke, it represents a case of homonymy (a friend of mine called his dog Beckett). But it can be something more serious. All things considered, Kafka imagined a situation in which Mr. Samsa becomes a bug. But in these cases there is a strong textual topic concerning the inner identity of the Self. In the structure of W0 it is assumed (under that description) that the unique essential properties of a human individual are those concerning the constancy of his mental identity under every condition. To have a body, to have a sex, or to have two legs becomes merely accidental. Our guinea pig would think à la Richelieu.
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17. It may be objected that in fictional texts S-necessary properties can be altered. Literary parodies are the proof of this. We can imagine a Broadway musical in which Richelieu is a tap dancer and D'Artagnan happily marries Lady de Winter after having sold the pendants of Anne of Austria under the counter. There are four answers: (i) The parody is not dealing with a given WN but with individuals who, because of the influence of that WN, have been absorbed by the encyclopedia in W0 as mythological characters. (ii) The parody works as a piece of structural criticism showing that certain relations were not so strictly necessary to the fabula or that the real fabula was another one ('how to win with a blow below the belt') and can survive to a different plot. (iii) All of the above discussion mainly concerned accessibility among

 
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