Truth Value Of Sentence Research Articles

Keeping context in mind: a non-semantic explanation of apparent context-sensitivity

Arguments for context-sensitivity are often based on judgments about the truth values of sentences: a sentence seems true in one context and false in another, so it is argued that the truth conditions of the sentence shift between these contexts. Such arguments rely on the assumption that our judgments reflect the actual truth values of sentences in context. Here, I present a non-semantic explanation of these judgments. In short, our judgments about the truth values of sentences are driven by heuristics that are only fallible reflections of actual truth values. These heuristics can lead to different truth-value judgments in different contexts, even when the sentence at issue is not semantically context-sensitive. As a case study, I consider Sterken’s (Philos. Imprint, 15, 2015a) argument for the context-sensitivity of generic generalisations. I provide a non-semantic explanation of Sterken’s truth-value judgments, which builds on Leslie’s (Philos Perspect 21(1):375–403, 2007; Philos Rev 117(1):1–47, 2008) theory of default generalisation.

Making sense of (in)determinate truth: the semantics of free variables

It is argued that truth value of a sentence containing free variables in a context of use (or the truth value of the proposition it expresses in a context of use), just as the reference of the free variables concerned, depends on the assumptions and posits given by the context. However, context may under-determine the reference of a free variable and the truth value of sentences in which it occurs. It is argued that in such cases a free variable has indeterminate reference and a sentence in which it occurs may have indeterminate truth value. On letting, say, x be such that x^2=4, the sentence ‘Either x=2 or x=-2’ is true but the sentence ‘x=2’ has an indeterminate truth value: it is determinate that the variable x refers to either 2 or -2, but it is indeterminate which of the two it refers to, as a result ‘x=2’ has a truth value but its truth value is indeterminate. The semantic indeterminacy is analysed in a ‘radically’ supervaluational (or plurivaluational) semantic framework closely analogous to the treatment of vagueness in McGee and McLaughlin (South J Philos 33:203–251, 1994, Linguist Philos 27:123–136, 2004) and Smith (Vagueness and degrees of truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008), which saves bivalence, the T-schema and the truth-functional analysis of the boolean connectives. It is shown that on such an analysis the modality ‘determinately’ is quite clearly not an epistemic modality, avoiding a potential objection raised by Williamson (Vagueness, Routledge, London, 1994) against such ‘radically’ supervaluational treatments of vagueness, and that determinate truth (rather than truth simpliciter) is the semantic value preserved in classically valid arguments. The analysis is contrasted with the epistemicist proposal of Breckenridge and Magidor (Philos Stud 158:377–400, 2012) which implies that (in the given context) ‘x=2’ has a determinate but unknowable truth value.

Supplemental Material for Quantification, Prediction, and the Online Impact of Sentence Truth-Value: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials

Supplemental Material for Quantification, Prediction, and the Online Impact of Sentence Truth-Value: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials

שפה ומשמעות: סיפור הולדתה ופריחתה של תורת המשמעים (Language and meaning: The birth and growth of cognitive semantics) (review)

Reviewed by: שפה ומשמעות: סיפור הולדתה ופריחתה של תורת המשמעים (Language and meaning: The birth and growth of cognitive semantics) Rivka Bliboim שפה ומשמעות: סיפור הולדתה ופריחתה של תורת המשמעים (Language and meaning: The birth and growth of cognitive semantics). By Tamar Sovran. Pp. 209. Haifa: University of Haifa Press, 2006. Paper. Online: http://www.kotar.co.il/KotarApp/Viewer.aspx?nBookID=96624633. "Only one who understands a subject thoroughly is able to convey it with a simple and clear style." This was a guideline for me, given by my first teacher Professor Uzi Ornan. Indeed, this book is characterized by its clarity and reader friendliness. The book invites the reader on a highly enjoyable journey to cognitive semantics. The book's main asset is its organization of concepts, notions, ideas, and terms of various linguistic trends. Linguists and educated readers who might stray among the abundance of linguistic theories and ideas, among the many thinkers, and among the recent developments [End Page 422] and branching of each theory will not do so here. In an exploding world of scientific knowledge, it is impossible to master every discipline deeply and widely. Normally a scholar knows "a lot about a little"—that is everything he should know in his domain of knowledge and masters the relevant theories to his research. This book enables one to know at least "a little about a lot." The author states that the book intends to close the knowledge gap caused by the rapid expansion of linguistic theories. Sovran provides an interested reader with a map that enables her to find her way, to navigate, and even to deepen his acquaintance with linguistic theories if he chooses to do so. The book not only organizes the main trends in linguistics and their prominent proponents, it also innovates. It discusses formal linguistics, generative linguistics, and especially various new directions in cognitive linguistics. Moreover, this book portrays the interface between linguistics and neighboring disciplines: philosophy and logic, sociology, psychology, and neurology. All these contributed to modern linguistics and were nourished by it. Sovran chose to write the book in Hebrew so it can address Hebrew language scholars and philologists as well as other interested readers. By doing so, she narrows the existing gap between "Hebrew Language" and "Linguistics"—two disciplines that usually have separate research agendas. Employing the very metaphor that Sovran uses, we see a possibility for reconciling the two disciplines and having them draw upon each other. The first section of the book deals with problems in the field of the theory of meaning. The author discusses the contributions of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Descartes, and the rationalist and empiricist approaches represented by Locke and Hume. She also mentions here the structuralist De Saussure and Frege, the mathematician and father of philosophy of language. Sovran shows how Chomsky was influenced by his predecessors and discusses the theory of speech acts and its main theorists, Austin and Searle and the important contribution of Grice. In the second chapter of this section, traditional grammar and its main interest in phonology and morphology is discussed and the generative turn created by Chomsky and the central and autonomic place syntax has played in his theory. Jackendoff, Chomsky's critic-successor and his theory of conceptual semantics, is mentioned here as well as a discussion of the emergence of cognitive semantics. Here we see the important role of Jakobson and the Prague school as well as generative semantic and the pioneering semantic work of Leech and Lyons. Sovran also summarizes the state of research in Israel, the first semantic books written in Hebrew, some prominent scholars such as Nir and Sarfatti, and the special contribution of Rubinstein. The second section contains many topics, among them formal logic theory, the truth value of sentences, possible worlds, comparative investigation [End Page 423] of different languages, language games, language as a game, and the influence of structuralism on the study of meaning. Frege was the first to distinguish between sense and reference. Russell, his successor introduced into the philosophy of language mathematical and logical modes of thinking. Here, Sovran discusses her main field of interest. She presents the concept of semantic fields, shows how the lexicon is organized, and discusses the influence of diachronic linguistics on synchronic linguistics. Kadari was...

In defence of a perspectival semantics for ‘know’

Relativism offers an ingenious way of accommodating most of our intuitions about ‘know’: the truth-value of sentences containing ‘know’ is a function of parameters determined by a context of use and a context of assessment. This sort of double-indexing provides a more adequate account of the linguistic data involving ‘know’ than does standard contextualism. However, relativism has come under recent attack: it supposedly cannot account for the factivity of ‘know’, and it entails, counterintuitively, that circumstances of evaluation have features that cannot be shifted by any intensional operator. I offer replies to these objections on behalf of the relativist. I then argue that a version of contextualism can account for the same data as relativism without relativizing sentence truth to contexts of assessment. This version of contextualism is thus preferable to relativism on methodological grounds.

Context Dependence, Disagreement, and Predicates of Personal Taste*

This paper argues that truth values of sentences containing predicates of “personal taste” such as fun or tasty must be relativized to individuals. This relativization is of truth value only, and does not involve a relativization of semantic content: If you say roller coasters are fun, and I say they are not, I am negating the same content which you assert, and directly contradicting you. Nonetheless, both our utterances can be true (relative to their separate contexts). A formal semantic theory is presented which gives this result by introducing an individual index, analogous to the world and time indices commonly used, and by treating the pragmatic context as supplying a particular value for this index. The context supplies this value in the derivation of truth values from content, not in the derivation of content from character. Predicates of personal taste therefore display a kind of contextual variation in interpretation which is unlike the familiar variation exhibited by pronouns and other indexicals.

Rejection and Truth-Value Gaps

A theorem due to Shoesmith and Smiley that axiomatizes two- valued multiple-conclusion logics is extended to partial logics. Rumfitt (1) extends Smiley's (3) discussion of rejection by axiomatizing a calculus where truth values of sentences are given by truth tables that admit truth-value gaps. The Smiley multiple-conclusion consequence for the calculus is defined over assertions and rejections. Rumfitt gives a complex Henkin-style proof of com- pleteness for this calculus. Our goal is to show that there is a simple procedure for axiomatizing calculi of the sort that he considers. We do this by imitating Shoesmith and Smiley's (2) proof of a similar result (their Theorem 18.1) where truth tables do not admit truth-value gaps and the consequence relation is defined without using re-

RELATIVISM AND ANTI‐REALISM

AbstractI characterise a relativist account of truth as one according to which the truth value of a sentence can vary without its meaning changing. Relativism is to be contrasted with absolutism, which states that the truth values of sentences cannot change, so long as their meanings remain constant. I argue that absolutism follows from the realist account of meaning and truth conditions. According to realism, the meaning of a sentence consists in objective truth conditions and sentences are true if and only if certain objective conditions obtain. Relativism is a consequence of anti‐realism. Anti‐realists believe that the meanings of sentences consist in recognisable conditions and that sentences are true if and only if certain recognisable conditions obtain. I contrast the sorts of relativism which results from partial, empiricism‐based anti‐realisms, and global anti‐realism, which is linked to a coherence theory of knowledge. I offer a few remarks on how global anti‐realists can restrict the scope of their relativism.

Column Generation Methods for Probabilistic Logic

Nilsson recently introduced a rigorous semantic generalization of logic in which the truth values of sentences are probability values. This led to state precisely several basic problems of artificial intelligence, a paradigm of which is probabilistic satisfiability (PSAT): determine, given a set of clauses and probabilities that these clauses are true, whether these probabilities are consistent. We consider several extensions of this model involving intervals on probability values, conditional probabilities and minimal modifications of probability values to ensure satisfiability. Investigating further an approach of G. Georgakopoulos, D. Kavvadias and C. H. Papadimitriou, we propose a column generation algorithm which allows to solve exactly all these extensions. Computational experience shows that large problems, with up to 140 variables and 300 clauses, may be solved in reasonable time. INFORMS Journal on Computing, ISSN 1091-9856, was published as ORSA Journal on Computing from 1989 to 1995 under ISSN 0899-1499.

Horwich on ‘Semantic’ and ‘Metaphysical’ Realism

Horwich argues that we should reject metaphysical realism, but that we can preserve semantic realism by adhering to a redundancy theory of truth and a confirmationist account of linguistic understanding. But the latter will give us semantic realism only if it allows that the truth-values of sentences may transcend our recognitional capacities, and this is possible only insofar as we covertly reintroduce metaphysical realism. In spite of its intuitive appeal, we should not endorse semantic realism, but this need not bear upon the tenability ofscientificrealism.

Probabilistic logic

Because many artificial intelligence applications require the ability to reason with uncertain knowledge, it is important to seek appropriate generalizations of logic for that case. We present here a semantical generalization of logic in which the truth values of sentences are probability values (between 0 and 1). Our generalization applies to any logical system for which the consistency of a finite set of sentences can be established. The method described in the present paper combines logic with probability theory in such a way that probabilistic logical entailment reduces to ordinary logical entailment when the probabilities of all sentences are either 0 or 1.

Frege: Una estipulación viable

Una de las tesis que mas extraneza ha causado a los estudiosos de Frege, es el concebir las oraciones declarativas como nombres propios de los valores veritativos. En este articulo aclarare las razones por las que Frege llego a tal conjetura, siguiendo esencialmente la esplendida presentacion que hace Thomas Moro SimpsonI del tema. Posteriormente, una vez que presente la critica de Simpson al "argumento" fregeano, propondre una solucion alternativa que Frege tenia practicamente a la mano, a saber, el uso de una estipulacion que proporciona un sentido tecnico de la nocion de nombrar, la cual hubiese convenido a los intereses de su teoria. A mi juicio, Frege pudo haber echado mano de este recurso, totalmente aceptable y congruente con su practica como matematico, que hubiese impedido cualquier objecion a su postura.

Platón, Sofista 256 e 5-6

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