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Single Idea 7769

[filed under theme 19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 9. Indexical Semantics ]

Full Idea

Davidson's response to the problem of how you would state truth conditions for "I am sick now" ...is to relativize its truth to a particular speaker and a time.

Gist of Idea

You can state truth-conditions for "I am sick now" by relativising it to a speaker at a time

Source

report of Donald Davidson (Truth and Meaning [1967]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.9

Book Ref

Lycan,William G.: 'Philosophy of Language' [Routledge 2000], p.142


A Reaction

Lycan is not happy with this, but it seems a reasonable way to treat the truth of any statement containing indexicals. Never mind the 'truth conditions theory of meaning' - just ask whether "I am sick now" is true.


The 5 ideas from 'Truth and Meaning'

Compositionality explains how long sentences work, and truth conditions are the main compositional feature [Davidson, by Lycan]
Davidson thinks Frege lacks an account of how words create sentence-meaning [Davidson, by Miller,A]
You can state truth-conditions for "I am sick now" by relativising it to a speaker at a time [Davidson, by Lycan]
Should we assume translation to define truth, or the other way around? [Blackburn on Davidson]
There is a huge range of sentences of which we do not know the logical form [Davidson]