The Problem of Hyperintensionality: A Truthmaker Approach

Congratulations to Yudi Huang for successfully defending his MA thesis, "The Problem of Hyperintensionality: A Truthmaker Approach” on June 15, 2023. His committee members were David Liebesman, Nicole Wyatt, and Richard Zach.

We asked Yudi to provide us with some insight into his thesis and his graduate studies experience in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary.

Tell us about your thesis topic.

In the analytic tradition, the dominant approach to analyzing philosophical notions is possible worlds semantics, which take these notions as operators acting on intensions, i.e., sets of possible worlds. Counterexamples to this intensionalism calls for a finer-grained analysis of contents, a hyperintensional one. The problem of hyperintensionality is to specify how fine-grained such an analysis should be. However, examples in the literature suggest that there is no unified account of “hyperintension”. In my thesis, I defend a pluralism about hyperintensionality based on Truthmaker Semantics, a hyperintensional framework that has been developed recently.

What was the most valuable outcome of the Graduate program for you?

The program has a warm and supportive group of faculty and peers. The courses allowed me to explore a variety of areas of philosophy (with intensive reading and writing). Also, I received a lot of experience in teaching during the program.

What are the next steps/plans for you?

I have entered the PhD program in Philosophy at the University of Southern California. I am happy to explore my interest in Logic, Language, and Metaphysics.