{"id":206,"date":"2006-01-14T21:54:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-15T01:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=206"},"modified":"2006-01-14T21:54:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-15T01:54:00","slug":"tarksis-t-schema-truth-conditions-and-senses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2006\/01\/tarksis-t-schema-truth-conditions-and-senses\/","title":{"rendered":"Tarksi’s T-Schema, Truth-Conditions, and Senses"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a tip from hammsbear, I took a look at Peter Ludlow’s article, “Do T-Theories Display Senses”<\/a>. Here are some of my thoughts on that article.<\/p>\n

Tarksi’s T-schema (“p” is true iff p) is often used to spell out the truth conditions for sentences. Thus, “snow is white” is true iff snow is white. (‘iff’ is short for ‘if and only if’)<\/p>\n

By “senses” Ludlow means the ways <\/span>in which something may be referred to. For example, “the Evening Star” and “the Morning Star” both have the same referent, namely, the planet Venus, but they pick out Venus in different ways, by appealing to different properties. Similarly, the names “Cicero” and “Tully” both refer to the same individual, Marcus Tullius Cicero. So they have the same referent. But they have a different sense because they pick out that individual in a different manner.<\/p>\n

The question Ludlow raises is whether or not the expression on the right-hand side (RHS) of the T-schema can give information about the various “senses” of the expression on the LHS,. On the one hand, it seems that “Cicero is bald” and “Tully is bald” should have the same truth-conditions because they refer to the same individual. Thus,<\/p>\n

(1) “Cicero is bald” iff Cicero is bald.
(2) “Tully is bald” iff Tully is bald.
(3) “Cicero is bald” iff Tully is bald.
(4) “Tully is bald” iff Cicero is bald.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, suppose there is a person S who knows that Cicero is bald but does not know that Cicero=Tully. Such a person would affirm (1) and (2) but would not affirm either (3) or (4), in which case, (1)-(4) do not properly characterize S’s semantic competence.<\/p>\n

Here’s how I understand this (and, mind you, I’m not a specialist in the philosophy of language):<\/p>\n

Sentence tokens like “Cicero is bald” and “Tully is bald” have the same truth-conditions iff they express the same<\/span> proposition. They express the same proposition iff they reflect the same <\/span>belief on the part of the speaker. If, therefore, S believes that Cicero is bald and has no belief about whether Cicero=Tully or whether Tully is bald, then S’s token “Cicero is bald” has the truth-conditions given in (1). If, however, S not only believes that “Cicero is bald” but also believes that Cicero=Tully, then the truth-conditions of S’s token “Cicero is bald” may be given by either (1) or (3) or, more fully, by<\/p>\n

(5) “Cicero is bald” iff Cicero\/Tully is bald.<\/p>\n

In (5) information about the senses is given in the RHS of the T-schema (by the ‘\/’ notation) and (5) does properly reflect S’s semantic competence.<\/p>\n

So I’m inclined to think, contra Ludlow, that information about senses can be supplied on the RHS of a T-schema expression when it does reflect the semantic competence of the speaker. The same state of affairs is being referred to in (1) and in (5), but (5) reflects a more extensive knowledge on the part of the speaker as to what that state of affairs is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a tip from hammsbear, I took a look at Peter Ludlow’s article, “Do T-Theories Display Senses”. Here are some of my thoughts on that article. Tarksi’s T-schema (“p” is true iff p) is often used to spell out the truth conditions for sentences. Thus, “snow is white” is true iff snow is white. (‘iff’\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}