I haven't been able to follow this. But at the beginning of this thread I had an intuition that there was some blurring of the notion of force in Frege that has been set out in subsequent work, which is why I went to the trouble of explicating the nature of illocutionary force. "Force" here is used to talk about intentionality, about what we are doing with the words at hand. So we speak of a difference in force between "Grass is green" used as an assertion, command or question. That's illocutionary force, operating at the level of sentences. There's also a difference in using "Berlin" for a city, a person or a rock band, and this might also be called a difference in "force". My understanding is that in choosing the judgement stroke to range over the whole expression Frege removed the illocutionary force. But the "force" that denotes remained. Hence we are able to use the same letter for the same item in the expression, giving us extensionality.Good. I’m only vaguely aware of how Frege’s concavity differs from our modern universal quantifier, but I think I can still ask these next questions. The Fregean universal quantifier ranges over objects as well as formulae/functions, right? So maybe my question about “Frege on the Beach” (sounds like a hit song) could be phrased as: "When you comprehend the term ‛Berlin’ (as I’m going to assume you do, Herr Frege), does your comprehension depend on the universal-quantification symbol? And then, should you choose to use the term to fulfill a function, does the existence commitment change to ∃x?” So the idea is that ∀ can range over names or terms that are not (yet) part of functions. Clearly, I’m trying to find a way to make a name (and its sense) a “thinkable thought” without violating Frege’s understanding of what logic can do. Does this sound at all sensible to you? — J
Isn't it a category error to challenge the fiction author regarding warrant? — Leontiskos
CHAPTER I.
YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
It's just that so many of the reviews take this as central. It seems these folk would scrap modality. We do think things like "what if I hadn't answered your post?". So perhaps they are wrong and there is no mystery here. That would help explain why no one has been able to set out Kimhi's argument coherently.Parmenides' questions — J
although I think you can remove the assertion in "real life" too. — Leontiskos
An utterance is just sounds or marks. Literally, nothing else. A sentence is a grammatically correct sequence of words, but a sentence has no specific meaning.
A proposition is expressed by an uttered sentence. A proposition is along the lines of content. — frank
Sure. But one can utter a sentence without expressing a proposition. And without making a judgement as to the sentence's truth.A proposition is expressed by an uttered sentence. — frank
What's perhaps salient here is that we can understand what a statement is about, and indeed, what it would take to make it true or false, while not knowing if it is true or if it is false, and certainly without having to make a judgement as to it's truth. There have been plenty of examples hereabouts - "the grass is green", "the cat is on the mat". — Banno
But one can utter a sentence without expressing a proposition. And without making a judgement as to the sentence's truth. — Banno
Well, perhaps you haven't. Then we agree that there is a difference between what a sentence is about and what is done with it?I don't think anyone has made that claim. — frank
Then we agree that there is a difference between what a sentence is about and what is done with it? — Banno
o it'd be neat to set up a system where we seperate out the judgement about our expressions from what they are about, so we could work through any inconsistencies in their content apart from their force. — Banno
So could you not understand what a sentence is about unless it is clear it was being used to make, say, an assertion rather than ask a question? Isn't it a bit more complex than that?I believe that in order for a sentence to be about something, it has to be used. — frank
I agree that a picture is not capable of depicting that it is true. However, I question the practical import of that to some extent. — wonderer1
One consequence of such a view might be that it's not really the tale we believe but the teller. We do not adopt a propositional attitude of "belief" toward the story, except perhaps as a consequence of adopting a social attitude of "trust" toward the storyteller. — Srap Tasmaner
If you give a lecture explaining what truth is, and I'm your audience, I have to already understand what truth is in order to discern what you're doing, that is, telling me the truth about truth. Therefore you can't teach it to me. — frank
My understanding is that in choosing the judgement stroke to range over the whole expression Frege removed the illocutionary force. But the "force" that denotes remained. — Banno
Frege may well have thought that proper names relied on quantification. Russell, arguably, did just that with his Definite Descriptions. — Banno
I still don't see that this follows. — J
I still don't see that this follows. Can't you have a mistaken or in-part inaccurate understanding of what truth is, and discover in the course of my lecture what the "truth about truth" is? You seem to be saying that you wouldn't be able to recognize the "truth about truth" unless you already had the correct understanding of what that is. But couldn't the lecture process itself provide the necessary enlightenment? i.e., in the course of listening to me, couldn't you find yourself agreeing with me and simultaneously realizing "Ah, of course, I now see why I believe this to be true"? — J
"But could we not maintain that there is truth when there is correspondence in a certain respect? But which respect? For in that case what ought we to do so as to decide whether something is true? We should have to inquire whether it is true that an idea and a reality, say, correspond in the specified respect. And then we should be confronted by a question of the same kind, and the game could begin again. So the attempted definition of truth as correspondence breaks down. For in a definition certain characteristics would have to be specified. And in application to any particular case the question would always arise whether it were true that the characteristics were present. So we should be going round in a circle. It therefore seems likely that the content of the word ‘true’ is sui generis and indefinable." — Gottlob Frege, “Der Gedanke. Eine logische Untersuchung,” in Beitrage zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 1 (1918): 58–77, translated into English as “Thoughts” by P. Geach and R. H. Stoothoff in Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy ed. B. McGuinness (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 351–72, reprinted in Propositions and Attitudes, ed. N. Salmon and S. Soames (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 33–55, at 36.
The argument suggested by this passage can be reconstructed as a reductio ad absurdum:
A. Suppose that truth is definable and that the definition is as follows: For any proposition p, p is true iff p is T.
B. If (A), then to inquire (establish) in any particular case whether a proposition p is true, one must inquire (establish) whether p is T.
C. Therefore, to inquire (establish) whether p is true, one must inquire (establish) whether p is T.
D. To inquire (establish) whether S is to inquire (establish) whether it is true that S, which is to inquire (establish) whether the proposition that S is true.
E. Therefore to inquire (establish) whether a proposition p is true, one must inquire (establish) whether the proposition that p is T is true, which in turn requires one to inquire (establish) whether the proposition that the proposition that p is T is itself T is true, and so on ad infinitum.
The argument can be continued in two different ways, one emphasizing circularity and the other emphasizing regress.
Circularity
F. Since deciding whether a proposition p is true involves deciding whether the proposition that p is T is true, the definition (A) of truth is circular.
G. Since adequate definitions cannot be circular, truth is indefinable.
Regress
F*. So if truth is definable, then deciding whether a proposition p is true requires completing the impossible task of deciding the truth values of infinitely many distinct propositions.
G*. Since we sometimes can decide whether a proposition is true, truth is indefinable. — Understanding Truth, p. 21
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