Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Freedom and Action' and 'Philosophy of Language'

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3 ideas

19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 6. Truth-Conditions Semantics
Truth conditions will come out the same for sentences with 'renate' or 'cordate' [Lycan]
     Full Idea: A Davidsonian truth theory will not be able to distinguish the meaning of a sentence containing 'renate' from that of one containing 'cordate'.
     From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch. 9)
     A reaction: One might achieve the distinction by referring to truth conditions in possible worlds, if there are possible worlds where some cordates are not renate. See Idea 7773.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 8. Possible Worlds Semantics
A sentence's truth conditions is the set of possible worlds in which the sentence is true [Lycan]
     Full Idea: A sentence's truth conditions can be taken to be the set of possible worlds in which the sentence is true.
     From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch.10)
     A reaction: Presumably the meaning can't be complete possible worlds, so this must be a supplement to the normal truth conditions view proposed by Davidson. It particularly addresses the problem seen in Idea 7770.
Possible worlds explain aspects of meaning neatly - entailment, for example, is the subset relation [Lycan]
     Full Idea: The possible worlds construal affords an elegant algebra of meaning by way of set theory: e.g. entailment between sentences is just the subset relation - S1 entails S2 if S2 is true in any world in which S1 is true.
     From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch.10)
     A reaction: We might want to separate the meanings of sentences from their entailments (though Brandom links them, see Idea 7765).