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Single Idea 19043

[filed under theme 5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 1. Bivalence ]

Full Idea

It is in the spirit of bivalence not just to treat each closed sentence as true or false; as Frege stressed, each general term must be definitely true or false of each object, specificiable or not.

Gist of Idea

Bivalence applies not just to sentences, but that general terms are true or false of each object

Source

Willard Quine (What Price Bivalence? [1981], p.36)

Book Ref

Quine,Willard: 'Theories and Things' [Harvard 1981], p.36

A Reaction

But note that this is only the 'spirit' of the thing. If you had (as I do) doubts about whether predicates actually refer to genuine 'properties', you may want to stick to the whole sentence view, and not be so fine-grained.

The 18 ideas with the same theme [propositions can only be true or false]:

21593 In talking of future sea-fights, Aristotle rejects bivalence [Aristotle, by Williamson]
22154 For Aristotle bivalence is a feature of reality [Aristotle, by Boulter]
21677 How can the not-true fail to be false, or the not-false fail to be true? [Cicero]
19102 Bivalence is a regulative assumption of enquiry - not a law of logic [Peirce, by Misak]
19043 Bivalence applies not just to sentences, but that general terms are true or false of each object [Quine]
8173 Language can violate bivalence because of non-referring terms or ill-defined predicates [Dummett]
8195 Undecidable statements result from quantifying over infinites, subjunctive conditionals, and the past tense [Dummett]
6889 Vagueness seems to be inconsistent with the view that every proposition is true or false [Mautner]
21606 'Bivalence' is the meta-linguistic principle that 'A' in the object language is true or false [Williamson]
18780 Standard disjunction and negation force us to accept the principle of bivalence [Mares]
18786 Excluded middle standardly implies bivalence; attacks use non-contradiction, De M 3, or double negation [Mares]
4700 A third value for truth might be "indeterminate", or a point on a scale between 'true' and 'false' [O'Grady]
4752 Deflationism must reduce bivalence ('p is true or false') to excluded middle ('p or not-p') [Engel]
9119 No attempt to deny bivalence has ever been accepted [Sorensen]
6163 If bivalence is rejected, then excluded middle must also be rejected [Rowlands]
4638 The principle of bivalence distorts reality, as when claiming that a person is or is not 'thin' [Baggini /Fosl]
23484 Bipolarity adds to Bivalence the capacity for both truth values [Morris,M]
18840 When faced with vague statements, Bivalence is not a compelling principle [Rumfitt]