Open texture and capacious pluralism about content

Bibliographic Data

ID21334986
AuthorsTorsten Odland (0000-0003-3961-3245, UCLA, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume69
Issue4
Pages1844-1870
Publication date2026-04-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2025.2497348
OpenAlexW4410011090
LanguageEN
References cited44

The traditional view of propositional content presupposes that there is a privileged classification of token representations that partitions them with respect to sameness of content. I argue that there is no such thing: we utilize multiple distinct standards of sameness of content, none of which is privileged. My argument is based on the existence of semantic underdetermination. Plausibly, we use expressions (e.g. ‘sandwich’) that do not have determinate extensions and that are open to precisification in multiple directions. This gives rise to indefinitely many possible cases of content fission, where a semantically underdetermined token is identified as having the same content as two tokens that are precisified in opposite ways. Content fission requires recognizing a huge variety of legitimate notions of sameness of content

Content (measure theory) · Epistemology · Law and economics · Pluralism (philosophy) · Sociology · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Mathematics · Philosophy · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications

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