In his article “An Approach to Intensional Analysis” (published in Noûs 1971), Pavel Tichý defended the view that individuals in the universe of discourse should be testable physical objects and all possible worlds should have the same universe of discourse. This entails that physical individuals are necessary entities and in the case of temporal worlds it entails the conclusion that they are eternal entities. In this article the reasons leading P. Tichý to this view are analysed, and the conclusion is reached that his argumentation holds only in a narrower sense of existence test.
The paper deals with the logical analysis of empirical descriptions from the perspective of temporal modal semantics. After general introductory remarks concerning the structure of descriptions and temporally conceived possible worlds, the author’s attention turns to the reference of descriptions and the properties ascribed to individuals by descriptions. A reference is an empirical relation between a description (ιx)Φ(x) and its referent relative to possible world w and time t. A description (ιx)Φ(x) refers to an object O in world w at time t (at world-time couple (w, t)) if O has the property (λx)Φ(x) at (w, t). The core of the article is investigating non-standard descriptions containing the so-called closure. The purpose of the closure is restricting the set of properties ascribed to an individual by description either to those that are explicitly ascribed or to those that are entailed by explicitly ascribed ones. It is argued that if a description (ιx)Φ(x) refers to an individual O at (w, t) then (ιx)(Φ(x) Cl(x)), where Cl(x) is a closure, cannot have a referent. It is suggested that the closure descriptions can be used in the analysis of Meinongian and fictitious objects.
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The article is a reaction to the criticism of the conception of ideal and physical sings (types and tokens) presented in the author's bookÚvod do logickej syntaxe a sémantiky(2001). This conception was severely criticized in the paper by K. Sekvent (2006) who rejected it as "theoretically and methodologically inappropriate". The author tries to show that there is no inconsistency in the criticized conception and that Sekvent misconceived the basic ideas of it.