scholarly journals INDICATIVE CONDITIONALS, RESTRICTED QUANTIFICATION, AND NAIVE TRUTH

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
HARTRY FIELD
Keyword(s):  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Truth Theory ◽  
Kripke’S Theory Of Truth ◽  
Restricted Quantification ◽  
Naïve Truth Theory

AbstractThis paper extends Kripke’s theory of truth to a language with a variably strict conditional operator, of the kind that Stalnaker and others have used to represent ordinary indicative conditionals of English. It then shows how to combine this with a different and independently motivated conditional operator, to get a substantial logic of restricted quantification within naive truth theory.

NAIVE TRUTH AND RESTRICTED QUANTIFICATION: SAVING TRUTH A WHOLE LOT BETTER

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
HARTRY FIELD
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Point ◽  
Truth Theory ◽  
Semantic Paradoxes ◽  
Nonclassical Logic ◽  
Naive Theories ◽  
Liar Sentence ◽  
Nonclassical Logics ◽  
Restricted Quantification ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Naïve Truth Theory

AbstractRestricted quantification poses a serious and under-appreciated challenge for nonclassical approaches to both vagueness and the semantic paradoxes. It is tempting to explain “All A are B” as “For all x, if x is A then x is B”; but in the nonclassical logics typically used in dealing with vagueness and the semantic paradoxes (even those where ‘if … then’ is a special conditional not definable in terms of negation and disjunction or conjunction), this definition of restricted quantification fails to deliver important principles of restricted quantification that we’d expect. If we’re going to use a nonclassical logic, we need one that handles restricted quantification better.The challenge is especially acute for naive theories of truth—roughly, theories that take True(〈A〉) to be intersubstitutable with A, even when A is a “paradoxical” sentence such as a Liar-sentence. A naive truth theory inevitably involves a somewhat nonclassical logic; the challenge is to get a logic that’s compatible with naive truth and also validates intuitively obvious claims involving restricted quantification (for instance, “If S is a truth stated by Jones, and every truth stated by Jones was also stated by Smith, then S is a truth stated by Smith”). No extant naive truth theory even comes close to meeting this challenge, including the theory I put forth in Saving Truth from Paradox. After reviewing the motivations for naive truth, and elaborating on some of the problems posed by restricted quantification, I will show how to do better. (I take the resulting logic to be appropriate for vagueness too, though that goes beyond the present paper.)In showing that the resulting logic is adequate to naive truth, I will employ a somewhat novel fixed point construction that may prove useful in other contexts.

scholarly journals Two-valued logics for naive truth theory

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Daniel Rosenblatt
Keyword(s):  
Truth Predicate ◽  
Truth Theory ◽  
The Liar ◽  
Naïve Truth Theory ◽  
Deterministic Matrix

It is part of the current wisdom that the Liar and similar semanticparadoxes can be taken care of by the use of certain non-classicalmultivalued logics. In this paper I want to suggest that bivalent logic can do just as well. This is accomplished by using a non-deterministic matrix to define the negation connective. I show that the systems obtained in this way support a transparent truth predicate. The paper also contains some remarks on the conceptual interest of such systems.

Ways of Being

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kris McDaniel
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Pluralism ◽  
Restricted Quantification ◽  
Mode Of Being ◽  
Ways Of Being

This chapter develops a version of ontological pluralism that appeals to semantically primitive restricted quantification and naturalness. It also articulate different ways of formulating versions of ontological pluralism. Although the author defends ontological pluralism from some objections, the main goals of this chapter are to get some versions of ontological pluralism on the table, show that they are intelligible and worthy of consideration, and show how concerns about ontological pluralism connect up with historical and contemporary meta-metaphysical issues. The chapter considers versions of ontological pluralism that say that substances have a different mode of being than attributes, that things in time have a different mode of being than atemporal objects, that stuff has a different mode of being than things, and many others.

The Structure of Truth

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
Historical Document ◽  
Truth Theory ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Theory Of Meaning ◽  
First Time

Donald Davidson’s 1970 Locke Lectures appear in print for the first time in this volume, accompanied by an introduction highlighting their significance as a snapshot of his evolving views in the philosophy of language and describing their relationship to the work he published during his lifetime. The lectures comprise an invaluable historical document that illuminates how Davidson was thinking about the theory of meaning, the role of a truth theory therein, the ontological commitments of a truth theory, the notion of logical form, and so on, at a pivotal moment in the development of his thought. Unlike Davidson’s previously published work, they are written so as to be presented to an audience as a fully organized and coherent exposition of his program in the philosophy of language. Had these lectures been widely available in the years following 1970, the reception of Davidson’s work, especially in the philosophy of language, might have been very different. Given the systematic nature of the presentation of Davidson’s semantic program in these lectures, it is hoped that they will be of use to those encountering his thought for the first time.

scholarly journals Necessitism, Contingentism, and Lewisian Modal Realism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Nencha
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Modal Realism ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
Restricted Quantification

AbstractNecessitism is the controversial thesis that necessarily everything is necessarily something, namely that everything, everywhere, necessarily exists. What is controversial about necessitism is that, at its core, it claims that things could not have failed to exist, while we have a pre-theoretical intuition that not everything necessarily exists. Contingentism, in accordance with common sense, denies necessitism: it claims that some things could have failed to exist. Timothy Williamson is a necessitist and claims that David Lewis is a necessitist too. The paper argues that, granted the assumptions that lead to interpret the Lewisian as a necessitist, she can preserve contingentist intuitions, by genuinely agreeing with the folk that existence is contingent. This is not just the uncontroversial claim that the Lewisian, as a result of the prevalence of restricted quantification in counterpart theoretic regimentations of natural language, can agree with the folk while disagreeing with them in the metaphysical room. Rather, this is the claim that it is in the metaphysical room that the Lewisian can endorse the intuitions lying behind contingentism.

On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals

1979 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Indicative Conditionals

scholarly journals Chasing Hook: Quantified Indicative Conditionals

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-57
Author(s):  
Angelika Kratzer
Keyword(s):  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Material Implication ◽  
General Account ◽  
The Right

The chapter looks at indicative conditionals embedded under quantifiers, with a special emphasis on ‘one-case’ conditionals as in No query was answered if it came from a doubtful address. It agrees with earlier assessments that a complete conditional (with antecedent and consequent) is embedded under a quantifier in those constructions, but then proceeds to create a dilemma by showing that we can’t always find the right interpretation for that conditional. Contrary to earlier assessments, Stalnaker’s conditional won’t always do. The chapter concludes that the embedded conditional in the sentence above is a material implication, but the if-clause also plays a pragmatic role in restricting the domain of the embedding quantifier. That an appeal to pragmatics should be necessary at all goes with Edgington’s verdict that ‘we do not have a satisfactory general account of sentences with conditional constituents’.

scholarly journals The metalinguistic use of vague predicates in conditionals

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 366
Author(s):  
Stefan Hinterwimmer
Keyword(s):  
Special Kind ◽  
Selection Function ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Epistemic Modal ◽  
The World ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
To Receive

This paper deals with an at first sight surprising reading that indicative conditionals whose antecedents contain vague predicates receive under certain conditions. I argue that the existence of this reading can be explained if indicative conditionals are allowed to receive a special kind of metalinguistic interpretation. According to this reading, the worlds quantified over do not (possibly) differ from the world of evaluation with respect to some extralinguistic state of affairs, but only with respect to the standards according to which the vague predicates in the antecedents are interpreted. I show that the availability of the metalinguistic reading can be accounted for if both the epistemic modal bases and the selection function relative to which the worlds quantified over are determined are allowed to operate in a more flexible way than is standardly assumed.

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