more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
It is clear that someone who knows under what conditions a sentence would be true understands that sentence, …and if someone does not know under what conditions it would be true then they do not understand it.
Gist of Idea
Knowing the potential truth conditions of a sentence is necessary and sufficient for understanding
Source
Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.13)
Book Ref
Davidson,Donald: 'Truth, Language and History' [OUP 2005], p.13
A Reaction
I've always subscribed to this view. Langauge is meaningless if you can't relate it to reality, and I don't think there could be a language without an intuitive notion of truth.
| 23287 | Disquotation only accounts for truth if the metalanguage contains the object language [Davidson] |
| 23288 | When Tarski defines truth for different languages, how do we know it is a single concept? [Davidson] |
| 23289 | Knowing the potential truth conditions of a sentence is necessary and sufficient for understanding [Davidson] |
| 23290 | It could be that the use of a sentence is explained by its truth conditions [Davidson] |
| 23292 | Correspondence can't be defined, but it shows how truth depends on the world [Davidson] |
| 23291 | Without truth, both language and thought are impossible [Davidson] |
| 23284 | Plato's Forms confused truth with the most eminent truths, so only Truth itself is completely true [Davidson] |
| 23285 | If we try to identify facts precisely, they all melt into one (as the Slingshot Argument proves) [Davidson] |
| 23286 | Truth can't be a goal, because we can neither recognise it nor confim it [Davidson] |