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Full Idea
A reasonable way of explaining an expression is by saying what conditions make its various contexts true.
Gist of Idea
A good way of explaining an expression is saying what conditions make its contexts true
Source
Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.3)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'Philosophy of Logic' [Prentice-Hall 1970], p.40
A Reaction
I like the circumspect phrasing of this, which carefully avoids any entities such as 'meanings' or 'truth conditions'. Maybe the whole core of philosophy of language should shift from theories of meaning to just trying to 'explain' sentences.
| 9021 | A good way of explaining an expression is saying what conditions make its contexts true [Quine] |
| 15229 | We say there is 'no alternative' in all sorts of contexts, and there are many different grounds for it [Harré/Madden] |
| 10458 | People slide from contextual variability all the way to contextual determination [Bach] |
| 21645 | 'Semantic type coercion' is selecting the reading of a word to make the best sense [Hofweber] |
| 22249 | The Naive view of communication is that hearers acquire exactly the thoughts of the speaker [Recanati] |
| 13448 | The domain of an assertion is restricted by context, either semantically or pragmatically [Rayo/Uzquiano] |
| 18036 | A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value [Magidor] |
| 18051 | In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion [Magidor] |
| 18406 | The basic Kaplan view is that there is truth-conditional content, and contextual character [Cappelen/Dever] |
| 18411 | It is proposed that a huge range of linguistic items are context-sensitive [Cappelen/Dever] |