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which is a part of our 'real' one (Hintikka, 1973, 1). It is not only a matter of convenience: elsewhere (Eco, 1976, 2.12, 13) I have tried to demonstrate that the Global Semantic Universe or Global Encyclopedia can never be exhaustively outlined, since it is a self-contradictory and continuously evolving system of interrelations. In other words, we are unable to give an exhaustive description even of our world, and its Global Encyclopedia is a mere regulative hypothesis.
Thus all possible worlds, and fictional worlds in particular, pick up many of their individuals as already recognizable as such in the world of reference.
8.4.4. The Construction of the World of Reference
Within the framework of a constructivistic approach to possible worlds, even a so-called 'actual' or 'real' world of reference must be taken as a possible world, that is, as a cultural construct.
One can say that the fantastic property of not dying when swallowed by a beast does not hold in the 'real' world because it is inconsistent with the second principle of thermodynamics. But to judge this property as 'untrue' or 'impossible', we just refer to a system of notions, that is, to our semantic encyclopedia.
When the medieval reader read in the Bible that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, the reader did not find this fact inconsistent with his own encyclopedia, that is, the various Specula Mundi basically founded upon the Bible. Now, his encyclopedia was as much a text as our own (our reasons for judging our encyclopedia more reliable are extrasemiotic and extralogical). We can only say that both the story of Jonah and the story of Little Red Riding Hood (taken as pieces of narrativity) respectively overlap their own world of reference. 8
The above assumptions apparently have a metaphysical flavor and sound rather idealistic. But they have a precise operational function in the present framework.
To face the problem of accessibility between worlds and the problem of transworld identity, one has to assume a constructivistic approach in which possible worlds are cultural constructs. But since each of these rational constructs overlaps its world of reference, a problem arises: how can rational constructs be compared with something which is given (and not constructed) like the world of our experience?
Therefore even the world of reference has to be postulated and dealt with as a cultural construct. In fact, the features characterizing possible worlds as cultural constructs can be adapted to a nonintuitive definition of the world of reference. A possible world is a part of one's conceptual system and depends on conceptual schemas. According to Hintikka

 
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