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Full Idea
The sentence 'I smell the scent of violets' has just the same content as 'It is true that I smell the scent of violets'. So it seems that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth.
Gist of Idea
The property of truth in 'It is true that I smell violets' adds nothing to 'I smell violets'
Source
Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.328 (61))
Book Ref
Frege,Gottlob: 'The Frege Reader', ed/tr. Beaney,Michael [Blackwell 1997], p.328
A Reaction
This idea predates Ramsey's similar proposal, for which, oddly, Ramsey always seems to get the credit. To a logician they may have identical content, but pragmatically they are likely to differ in context. 'True' certainly doesn't add to the thought.
| 14777 | That a judgement is true and that we judge it true are quite different things [Peirce] |
| 19468 | The property of truth in 'It is true that I smell violets' adds nothing to 'I smell violets' [Frege] |
| 14176 | "The death of Caesar is true" is not the same proposition as "Caesar died" [Russell] |
| 3750 | "It is true that x" means no more than x [Ramsey] |
| 19197 | Truth can't be eliminated from universal claims, or from particular unspecified claims [Tarski] |
| 11074 | 'It is true that this follows' means simply: this follows [Wittgenstein] |
| 9011 | Truth is redundant for single sentences; we do better to simply speak the sentence [Quine] |
| 2347 | Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam] |
| 19153 | Truth is basic and clear, so don't try to replace it with something simpler [Davidson] |
| 6335 | The redundancy theory cannot explain inferences from 'what x said is true' and 'x said p', to p [Horwich] |
| 12439 | Truth is dispensable, by replacing truth claims with the sentence itself [Azzouni] |
| 21640 | 'It's true that Fido is a dog' conjures up a contrast class, of 'it's false' or 'it's unlikely' [Hofweber] |
| 14008 | The redundancy theory conflates metalinguistic bivalence with object-language excluded middle [Bourne] |