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Single Idea 13948

[filed under theme 19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 1. Meaning ]

Full Idea

It does have to be acknowledged, I think, that every statement whatever is such that there is no one meaning which any sentence used to assert it must have.

Gist of Idea

For any statement, there is no one meaning which any sentence asserting it must have

Source

Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], 11)

Book Ref

Cartwright,Richard: 'Philosophical Essays' [MIT 1987], p.46

A Reaction

This feels to me like a Gricean move - that what we are really interested in is communicating one mental state to another mental state, and there are all sorts of tools that can do that one job.

The 19 ideas from Richard Cartwright

9783 While no two classes coincide in membership, there are distinct but coextensive attributes [Cartwright,R]
9784 A false proposition isn't truer because it is part of a coherent system [Cartwright,R]
9786 Philosophers working like teams of scientists is absurd, yet isolation is hard [Cartwright,R]
13952 Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent [Cartwright,R]
13953 An act of ostension doesn't seem to need a 'sort' of thing, even of a very broad kind [Cartwright,R]
13954 The difficulty in essentialism is deciding the grounds for rating an attribute as essential [Cartwright,R]
13955 Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic [Cartwright,R]
13941 Are the truth-bearers sentences, utterances, ideas, beliefs, judgements, propositions or statements? [Cartwright,R]
13942 Logicians take sentences to be truth-bearers for rigour, rather than for philosophical reasons [Cartwright,R]
13943 We can attribute 'true' and 'false' to whatever it was that was said [Cartwright,R]
13944 We can pull apart assertion from utterance, and the action, the event and the subject-matter for each [Cartwright,R]
13946 To assert that p, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to utter some particular words [Cartwright,R]
13947 'It's raining' makes a different assertion on different occasions, but its meaning remains the same [Cartwright,R]
13948 For any statement, there is no one meaning which any sentence asserting it must have [Cartwright,R]
13951 Assertions, unlike sentence meanings, can be accurate, probable, exaggerated, false.... [Cartwright,R]
13950 People don't assert the meaning of the words they utter [Cartwright,R]
13945 A token isn't a unique occurrence, as the case of a word or a number shows [Cartwright,R]
14961 Clearly a pipe can survive being taken apart [Cartwright,R]
14962 Bodies don't becomes scattered by losing small or minor parts [Cartwright,R]