5 ideas
| 10845 | To be true a sentence must express a proposition, and not be ambiguous or vague or just expressive [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Sentences or assertions can be derivately called true, if they succeed in expressing determinate propositions. A sentence can be ambiguous or vague or paradoxical or ungrounded or not declarative or a mere expression of feeling. | |
| From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.276) | |
| A reaction: Lewis has, of course, a peculiar notion of what a proposition is - it's a set of possible worlds. I, with my more psychological approach, take a proposition to be a particular sort of brain event. |
| 10847 | Truthmakers are about existential grounding, not about truth [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Instances of the truthmaker principle are equivalent to biconditionals not about truth but about the existential grounding of all manner of other things; the flying pigs, or what-have-you. | |
| From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001]) | |
| A reaction: The question then is what the difference is between 'existential grounding' and 'truth'. There wouldn't seem to be any difference at all if the proposition in question was a simple existential claim. |
| 10846 | Truthmaker is correspondence, but without the requirement to be one-to-one [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The truthmaker principle seems to be a version of the correspondence theory of truth, but differs mostly in denying that the correspondence of truths to facts must be one-to-one. | |
| From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.277) | |
| A reaction: In other words, several different sentences might have exactly the same truthmaker. |
| 15666 | To understand language is to know how to use it to reach shared understandings [Habermas] |
| Full Idea: One simply would not know what it is to understand the meaning of a linguistic expression if one did not know how one could make use of it in order to reach understanding with someone about something. | |
| From: Jürgen Habermas (On the Pragmatics of Communications [1998], p.228), quoted by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.3:34 | |
| A reaction: Not offered as a 'theory of meaning', and certainly plausible. Compare a hammer, though: a proper understanding is that it is used to exert a sharp force, but you can take in its structure and nature before you spot its usage. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |