Logically Impossible Contents

ABSTRACT Can natural language represent logically impossible circumstances? Can there be logically impossible contents? The received view on semantic content allows for logically impossible contents. Much recent work in the philosophy of language and logic meant to account for hyperintensional phenomena also assumes that the answer to both of these questions is “yes.” I want to argue that this widespread assumption is indefensible. Representing the logically impossible in language, contrary to the dominant view in semantics, is not truly possible. The main argument for this position appeals to a highly plausible and minimal condition for the possession of semantic content. I call this the negative coherence condition . Any candidate's meaningful sentence S possesses semantic content only if the content of S is logically compossible with the content of the meaning‐constituting sentences associated with each of the descriptive constituent terms of S . However, the sentences of L thought to express logically impossible contents that cannot meet the negative coherence condition on semantic content. In an intuitive sense, sentences with logically impossible contents are incoherent with the conditions of their own meaningfulness.