Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Lycophron, Hesiod and Ian Rumfitt

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2 ideas

19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial
The truth grounds for 'not A' are the possibilities incompatible with truth grounds for A [Rumfitt]
     Full Idea: The truth-grounds of '¬A' are precisely those possibilities that are incompatible with any truth-ground of A.
     From: Ian Rumfitt (The Boundary Stones of Thought [2015], 7.1)
     A reaction: This is Rumfitt's proposal for the semantics of 'not', based on the central idea of a possibility, rather than a possible world. The incompatibility tracks back to an absence of shared grounding.
We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt]
     Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A.
     From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV)
     A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role).