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where the individuals and their properties are selected according to the question governing the textual course. This world structure W0 cannot be the globality (unattainable) of the world of reference, but just a profile of it or perspective on it that we take as determinant for the interpretation and the generation of a given text. |
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Therefore we can say that, if my mother-in-law wonders what might have happened to her son-in-law had he not married her daughter, the obvious answer would be: in her W0 I and her son-in-law are the same person, but in her counterfactual world W1 she is dealing with two different persons, one of which is rather imprecise. |
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If, on the contrary, one wonders what would have happened had the author of the present paper (W0) never married (W1), the answer is: probably this paper in W1 would not contain the present example, but this shift in kinship properties would not seriously affect the procedure of identification: the author of this paper in W0 will be the same as the author of this paper in W1. |
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It has been objected (Volli, 1978) that, if a possible world is never complete and overlaps its world of reference, then, when considering the world of reference, one should take into account the entire content of the encyclopedia it represents. Therefore, when considering the W1 of my mother-in-law's counterfactual, where I exist as borrowed from the 'actual' world, I should consider all the propositions holding in the second one, namely, that the Earth is round, that 17 is a prime number, that Hawaii is in the Pacific, and so on. |
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This sounds preposterous when compared to the remarks of section 8.5. The above counterfactual depends on a specific discursive topic (my kinship relation with that lady) and this topic has made clear that among my properties only a few must be blown up (mainly those of being an adult male and being married to a certain person). All the others are narcotized and are potentially stored in the encyclopedia this specific topic indirectly trusts. I do not have to speculate whether in W1 I have two legs as in W0, since in W0 it is not requested of me to decide whether I have two legs (I am simply alerted to react should I be outlined in W1 as a cripple or a cul-de-jatte). But this is always a psychological picture of the situation. According to the topic the world structure W0, reduced in individuals and properties, has been built up so as to compare it to the equally reduced W1.
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8.6.2. Potential Variants and Supernumeraries |
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Let me borrow from Rescher (1973) a series of suggestions to outline a simplified model of transworld identity and of accessibility among worlds. |
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Let us define a possible world as a construct for which are specified the following: |
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