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this point there is no longer an actual world. /Actual/ becomes a linguistic device like /I/ or /this/. |
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Therefore accessibility as conceivability can be maintained as a mere metaphor, even though a very useful one. |
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Anyway, conceivability ought not to be confused with compatibility with one's own propositional attitudes. If a propositional attitude is dependent on the assumption of a given encyclopedia, then accessibility (and compatibility) are not a matter of psychology, but one of objective and formal comparison between two cultural constructs. Thus we are only faced with a problem of transformability among structures. |
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We shall see that such an approach accounts both for questions of accessibility among worlds and for transworld identity. |
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8.5. Textual Topics and Necessity |
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8.5.1. Diagnostic Properties |
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In order to go with the notion of possible worlds in textual analysis, one must face the problem of the properties assigned to a given individual: Are there some properties more resistant than others to narcotization? Is there a sort of logical or semantic hierarchy subdividing semantic properties as strictly necessary, sloppily necessary, and merely accidental? |
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Let us approach it through a textual example. |
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In chapter 2 Raoul and Marguerite at the end of the play return home in a coupé. By an elementary operation of semantic disclosure the reader understands that a coupé is a carriage. (It is commonly admitted that the proposition «this is a coupé» entails «this is a carriage»as well as «this is a vehicle».) |
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However, dictionaries also say that a coupé is a ''short four-wheeled closed carriage with an inside seat for two and an outside seat on the front for the driver.''
10 As such a coupé is frequently confused with a brougham (even though broughams may have two or four wheels and two or four places, and positively have their driver's seat on the rear). |
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There is, however, a reason for which a coupé is somewhat similar to a brougham: both are closed and are 'bourgeois carriages'. As such they may be opposed to a 'proletarian carriage' such as an omnibus, which can have as many as sixteen passengers. |
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One may thus say that the different properties of broughams and coupes become more or less 'necessary' or 'essential' (this difference will be clarified later) only in respect to discursive and narrative topics: necessity or essentiality is a matter of co-textual comparison. When one compares a coupé with a brougham, the position of the driver's seat becomes diagnostic (Nida, 1975), whereas that of the top roof does not. When one compares a coupé with a cabriolet, the diagnostic opposition is top roof vs. folding top. |
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