8188
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Davidson takes truth to attach to individual sentences [Davidson, by Dummett]
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Full Idea:
Davidson, by contrast to Frege, has taken truth as attaching to linguistic items, that is, to actual or hypothetical token sentences.
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From:
report of Donald Davidson (True to the Facts [1969]) by Michael Dummett - Truth and the Past 1
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A reaction:
My personal notion of truth is potentially applicable to animals, so this doesn't appeal to me. I am happy to think of animals as believing simple propositions that never get as far as language, and being right or wrong about them.
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15537
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If cats are vague, we deny that the many cats are one, or deny that the one cat is many [Lewis]
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Full Idea:
To deny that there are many cats on the mat (because removal of a few hairs seems to produce a new one), we must either deny that the many are cats, or else deny that the cats are many. ...I think both alternatives lead to successful solutions.
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From:
David Lewis (Many, but almost one [1993], 'The paradox')
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A reaction:
He credits the problem to Geach (and Tibbles), and says it is the same as Unger's 'problem of the many' (Idea 15536).
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15539
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Basic to pragmatics is taking a message in a way that makes sense of it [Lewis]
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Full Idea:
The cardinal principle of pragmatics is that the right way to take what is said, if at all possible, is the way that makes sense of the message.
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From:
David Lewis (Many, but almost one [1993], 'A better solution')
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A reaction:
Thus when someone misuses a word, suggesting nonsense, we gloss over it, often without even mentioning it, because the underlying sense is obvious. A good argument for the existence of propositions. Lewis doesn't mention truth.
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