 An option for the actualist here, perhaps, is simply to deny that Kripke interpretations have any genuine metaphysical bite. Rather, the role of Kripke’s possible world semantics is simply to get the intuitive validities right; soundness and completeness proofs for KQML then demonstrate that the system preserves those intuitive validities and, hence, that it is a trustworthy vehicle for reasoning directly about the modal facts of the matter. The formal semantics proper is just a useful device toward this end. However, on the face of it, anyway, this instrumentalist take on Kripke’s semantics is an uncomfortable one for the actualist. Consider ordinary Tarskian semantics for classical first-order logic FOL. Intuitively, this semantics is more than just a formal instrument. Rather, an intended interpretation for a given applied language \(\scrL\) shows clearly how the semantic values of the relevant parts of a formula of \(\scrL\)—the objects, properties, relations, etc. in the world those parts signify—contribute to the actual truth value of the sentence. The semantics thus provides insight into the “word-world” connection that explains how it is that sentences of natural language can express truth and falsity, how they can carry good and bad information. The possibilist is able to generalize this understanding of the semantics of first-order languages directly to modal languages \(\scrL_\Box\). The embarrassing question for the actualist who would take the proposed instrumentalist line on Kripke’s semantics is: what distinguishes Kripkean semantics from Tarskian? Why does the latter yield insight into the word-world connection and not the former? Actualists owe us either an explanation of how Kripke’s semantics can be understood non-instrumentally without entailing possibilism or a plausible instrumentalist answer to the possibilist challenge. The former option is explored in  §4.2,  the latter in  §4.3  and  §4.4.