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red
round
x1
+
+
x2
+
-
x3
-
+
x4
-
-

Figure 8.3
a W2 in which only x2 and x4 exist, or a third W3 in which only x1 exists.
It is clear at this point that individuals in themselves are nothing else but pairs of differently combined properties.
Rescher (1973:331) speaks of a possible world as an ens rationis, or as "an approach to possibilia as rational constructs," and proposes a feasible matrix by which one can compose sets of essential and accidental properties thus outlining possible individuals. I would prefer to speak of a 'cultural' construct.
Thus Little Red Riding Hood, within the framework of the story that creates her, is a mere spatiotemporal meeting of physical qualities, relations with other characters, actions performed, or passions suffered. 7
Nevertheless, the text does not list all the possible properties of that girl: by telling us that she is a little girl the text directs our semantic disclosures towards the 'real' world or our world of reference. The same is done with the wolf except for the explicit substitution of the property «nonspeaking» with «able to speak». In this sense a narrative world picks up preexisting sets of properties (and therefore individuals) from the 'real' world, that is, from the world to which the reader is invited to refer as the world of reference.
This happens for both theoretical and practical reasons. No fictional world could be totally autonomous, since it would be impossible for it to outline a maximal and consistent state of affairs by stipulating ex nihilo the whole of its individuals and of their properties. As we have seen, it is enough for a story to assert that there exists an (imaginary) individual called Raoul; then, by defining him as a man, the text refers to the normal properties attributed to men in the world of reference. A fictional text abundantly overlaps the world of the reader's encyclopedia. But also, from a theoretical point of view, this overlapping is indispensable, and not only for fictional worlds.
It is quite impossible to build up a complete alternative word or even to describe our 'real' one as completely built up. Even from a strictly formal point of view, it seems hard to produce an exhaustive description of a complete state of affairs, and it is more feasible to resort to a model ensemble or to a partial description, a reduced schema of a possible world

 
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