De re and de dicto (Q1115410)

A simple modal sentence of type \(\square Fx\) (e.g., ``Necessarily, Socrates is wise'') can be interpreted either de dicto as ``It is necessarily true that Socrates is wise'' or de re as ``Socrates is necessarily (or essentially) wise''. Corresponding sentences \(\square Fx_ 1...x_ n\) with n-ary predicates admit of \(2^ n\) different de re and de dicto interpretations. The author develops a formal system which is rich enough to handle all these possibilities. The syntax of standard first-order modal logic is enriched by containing, for each individual variable \(x_ i\), infinitely many ``position variants'' \(x^ 1_ i,x^ 2_ i,...\), and in addition also a so-called ``dictafier symbol \(\nabla ''\) the intuitive meaning of which remains somewhat unclear. The corresponding semantics is obtained by adding to the ingredients of a usual modal model structure over a set W of possible worlds a non-empty set D of ``essences'' and an ``essence assignment'' function \(\theta\). The paper contains an axiomatization of this logic including a Henkin- style completeness proof.