In this paper, I try to understand what Buridan means when he suggests that "every proposition, by its very form, signifies or asserts itself to be true." I show how one way of construing this claim - that every proposition is in fact a conjunction one conjunct of which asserts the truth of the whole conjunction - does lead to a resolution of the Liar paradox, as Buridan says, and moreover is not vulnerable to the criticism on the basis (...) of which Buridan came to reject this view. However, I go on to argue that the view causes Truth-Teller worries when applied to non-Liar propositions. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Robert Boyle does not hold that true religion requires us to believe doctrines that are in violation of the law of noncontradiction or that it yields logical contradictions. Rather, due to the epistemological limitations of human reason, we are sometimes called to believe doctrines or propositions that are at first blush contradictory but, upon further inspection, not definitively so. This holds for doctrines considered singly or together and is an important qualifier to (...) the traditional line of scholarship’s flat claim that Boyle’s limits of belief are logical contradictions. My conclusions here are at odds with Jan W. Wojcik’s claim, in her important, revisionist work on the famous natural philosopher, that he teaches that sometimes we are required to believe religious doctrines that violate the law of noncontradiction. (shrink)

This paper replies to points Williams makes to his reply to Sayward’s criticism of Williams’s proposal of ‘for some p ___ states that p & p’ as an analysis of ‘___ is true’.

Study of Wittgenstein's claim in the Preface of the Tractatus that his thoughts are unassailably true and his declaration at the end of the work that his propositions are nonsensical.

Charles Sanders Peirce proposed two different solutions to the Liar Paradox. He proposed the first in 1865 and the second in 1869. However, no one has yet noted in the literature that Peirce rejected his 1869 solution in 1903. Peirce never explicitly proposed a third solution to the Liar Paradox. Nonetheless, I shall argue he developed the resources for a third and novel solution to the Liar Paradox.In what follows, I will first explain the Liar Paradox. Second, I will briefly (...) rehearse Peirce's 1865 solution and his reasons for rejecting it.1 Third, I will review his 1869 solution and his reasons for rejecting it in 1903. Lastly, I will propose a novel solution to the Liar Paradox by drawing upon Peirce's later.. (shrink)

Fitch’s paradox of knowability is an apparently valid reasoning from the assumption (typical of semantic anti-realism) that every true proposition is knowable to the unacceptable conclusion that every true proposition is known. The paper develops a critical dialectic wrt one of the best motivated solutions to the paradox which have been proposed on behalf of semantic anti-realism—namely, the intuitionistic solution. The solution consists, on the one hand, in accepting the intuitionistically valid part of Fitch’s reasoning while, on the (...) other hand, exploiting the characteristic weakness of intuitionistic logic in order to preserve the consistency of such acceptance with the denial of omniscience. It is first remarked how the solution still commits one to acceptance of modal claims which are unwarranted even by the lights of standard intuitionistic semantics. A novel form of the paradox is then introduced, which focuses on infallibility rather than omniscience and derives, from semantic anti-realism and a highly plausible constraint on knowledge, that every believed proposition is not untrue. Because of the logical form of this conclusion, an analogue of the intuitionistic solution for the novel form of the paradox would require drawing the characteristic intuitionistic distinctions wrt decidable propositions, which cannot be done. Semantic anti-realism still intuitionistically entails the unacceptable conclusion that every believed (decidable) proposition is true. (shrink)

Though some doubts about the principle that every proposition is either true or false were entertained even by Aristotle, both the number and the vigor of criticisms of this principle have been increasing in recent years. This paper attempts a restatement and a re-examination of the issues involved in this dispute, and in particular an evaluation of the effects on the argument of such recent discoveries as that of the “many-valued logics.”.

In this essay, I argue that Robert Boyle does not hold that true religion requires us to believe doctrines that are in violation of the law of noncontradictionor that it yields logical contradictions. Rather, due to the epistemological limitations of human reason, we are sometimes called to believe doctrines orpropositions that are at first blush contradictory but, upon further inspection, not definitively so. This holds for doctrines considered singly or together and is animportant qualifier to the traditional line of (...) scholarship’s flat claim that Boyle’s limits of belief are logical contradictions. My conclusions here are at odds withJan W. Wojcik’s claim, in her important, revisionist work on the famous natural philosopher, that he teaches that sometimes we are required to believe religiousdoctrines that violate the law of noncontradiction. (shrink)

Using William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the play-within-the play, The Murder of Gonzago, as a case study, this essay argues that theatrical utterances constitute a special case of language usage not previously elucidated: the utterance of a statement with propositional content in theatre functions as an event. In short, the propositional content of a particular p (e.g. p1, p2, p3 …), whether or not it is true, is only understood—and understood to be true—if p1 is uttered in a particular (...) time, place, and situation (i.e. during a theatrical event); otherwise, the propositional content in those theatrical utterances can either be false or contingently true. (shrink)

Peirce maintains that facts and propositions are structurally isomorphic. When we understand how Peirce thinks they are isomorphic, we find that a common objection raised against epistemic conceptions of truth – that there are facts beyond the ken of discovery – holds no water against Peirce’s claim that truth is what would be believed after a sufficiently long and rigorous course of inquiry.

This paper argues that, for Bernard Nieuwentijt, mathematical reasoning on the basis of ideas is not the same as logical reasoning on the basis of propositions. Noting that the two types of reasoning differ helps make sense of a peculiar-sounding claim Nieuwentijt makes, namely that it is possible to mathematically deduce false propositions from true abstracted ideas. I propose to interpret Nieuwentijt’s abstracted ideas as incomplete mental copies of existing objects. I argue that, according to Nieuwentijt, a (...) proposition is mathematically deducible from an abstracted idea if it can be demonstrated that that proposition makes a true claim about the object that idea forms. This allows me to explain why Nieuwentijt deems it possible to deduce false propositions from true ideas. It also implies that logic and mathematics are not as closely related for Nieuwentijt as has been suggested in the existing secondary literature. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to reflect on what characterizes the evidence of the propositions that we hold to be necessary. I have tried to show that the evidence of every necessarily true proposition takes the form of a self-contained operational composition. In conclusion, I will point out in what respects the view I defend might help to reconcile some traits of Husserl’s understanding of material a priori truth with some of the later Wittgenstein’s intuitions concerning (...) linguistic meaning. (shrink)

Fitch showed that not every true proposition can be known in due time; in other words, that not every proposition is knowable. Moore showed that certain propositions cannot be consistently believed. A more recent dynamic phrasing of Moore-sentences is that not all propositions are known after their announcement, i.e., not every proposition is successful. Fitch's and Moore's results are related, as they equally apply to standard notions of knowledge and belief (S 5 and KD45, respectively). If we (...) interpret ‘successful’ as ‘known after its announcement’ and ‘knowable’ as ‘known after some announcement’, successful implies knowable. Knowable does not imply successful: there is a proposition ϕ that is not known after its announcement but there is another announcement after which ϕ is known. We show that all propositions are knowable in the more general sense that for each proposition, it can become known or its negation can become known. We can get to know whether it is true: ◊(Kϕ ∨ K¬ϕ). This result comes at a price. We cannot get to know whether the proposition was true. This restricts the philosophical relevance of interpreting ‘knowable’ as ‘known after an announcement’. (shrink)

There are two broad approaches to theorizing about ontological categories. Quineans use first-order quantifiers to generalize over entities of each category, whereas type theorists use quantification on variables of different semantic types to generalize over different categories. Does anything of import turn on the difference between these approaches? If so, are there good reasons to go type-theoretic? I argue for positive answers to both questions concerning the category of propositions. I also discuss two prominent arguments for a Quinean conception (...) of propositions, concerning their role in natural language semantics and apparent quantification over propositions within natural language. It will emerge that even if these arguments are sound, there need be no deep question about Quinean propositions’ true nature, contrary to much recent work on the metaphysics of propositions. (shrink)

Toward the end of his classic treatise An Essay on Free Will, Peter van Inwagen offers a modal argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason which he argues shows that the principle “collapses all modal distinctions.” In this paper, a critical flaw in this argument is shown to lie in van Inwagen’s beginning assumption that there is such a thing as the conjunction of all contingently true propositions. This is shown to follow from Cantor’s theorem and a property (...) of conjunction with respect to contingent propositions. Given the failure of this assumption, van Inwagen’s argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason cannot succeed, at least not without the addition of some remarkable and previously unacknowledged qualifications. (shrink)

The pressure to individuate propositions more finely than intensionally—that is, hyper-intensionally—has two distinct sources. One source is the philosophy of mind: one can believe a proposition without believing an intensionally equivalent proposition. The second source is metaphysics: there are intensionally equivalent propositions, such that one proposition is true in virtue of the other but not vice versa. I focus on what our theory of propositions should look like when it's guided by metaphysical concerns about what is (...) true in virtue of what. In this paper I articulate and defend a metaphysical theory of the individuation of propositions, according to which two propositions are identical just in case they occupy the same nodes in a network of invirtuation relations. Invirtuation is here taken to be a primitive relation of metaphysical explanation exemplified by propositions that, in conjunction with truth, defines the notion of true in virtue of. After formulating the theory, I compare it with a view.. (shrink)

I defend the view that propositions are a kind of property which is true iff it is instantiated. I discuss how we should think about propositional attitudes on this sort of view, and explain why I favor this sort of view over the more familiar Chisholm/Lewis view that attitudes are self-ascriptions of properties. I conclude by raising, and briefly discussing, two problems for the kind of view of propositions I favor.

According to many actualists, propositions, singular propositions in particular, are structurally complex, that is, roughly, (i) they have, in some sense, an internal structure that corresponds rather directly to the syntactic structure of the sentences that express them, and (ii) the metaphysical components, or constituents, of that structure are the semantic values — the meanings — of the corresponding syntactic components of those sentences. Given that reference is "direct", i.e., that the meaning of a name is its denotation, (...) an apparent consequence of this view is that any proposition expressed by a sentence containing a name that denotes a contingent being S is itself contingent — notably, the proposition [S does not exist]. Assuming that an entity must exist to have a property, necessarily, [S does not exist] must exist in order to be true. It seems to follow that, necessarily, [S does not exist] is not true and, hence, that S is not contingent after all. Past approaches to the problem — notably, those of Prior and Adams — lead to highly undesirable consequences for quantified modal logic. In this paper, several solutions to this puzzle are developed that preserve actualism, the structured view of propositions, the direct theory of reference, and the intuition that [S does not exist] is indeed possible without the adverse consequences for QML of previous solutions. (shrink)

Philosophers have accused locke of holding a view about propositions that simply conflates the formation of a propositional thought with the judgment that a proposition is true, and charged that this has obviously absurd consequences.1 Worse, this account appears not to be unique to Locke: it bears a striking resemblance to one found in both the Port-Royal Logic (the Logic, for short) and the Port-Royal Grammar. In the Logic, this account forms part of the backbone of the traditional (...) logic expounded in the text. As a result, the account’s alleged faults seem to seriously threaten the coherence and value of the whole approach to logic. And to the extent that Locke’s core philosophical commitments, in particular his .. (shrink)

This article aims to demonstrate the interdependence of semantics and noetics against the referentialist trend in Abelard studies conceiving semantics as confined to the truth/falsity function. The article takes as a turning point of the argument Abelard’s question “can a true proposition generate a false understanding?” which secondary literature does not take into account. Starting from the analysis of this question, the article aims to show the development of an enhanced notion of understanding compared to the Boethian one. The (...) core of this enhanced notion of understanding is the action of attentio, which is the condition for the elaboration of a coherent and global definition of signification. The analysis of the mental action of attentio entails the description of other kinds of mental actions, leading one to conceive understanding as a multi-layered complex of actions. (shrink)

Philosophy, science, and common sense all refer to propositions--things we believe and say, and things which are true or false. But there is no consensus on what sorts of things these entities are. Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames, and Jeff Speaks argue that commitment to propositions is indispensable, and each defend their own views on the debate.

Proposition and sentence are two separate entities indicating their specific purposes, definitions and problems. A proposition is a logical entity. A proposition asserts that something is or not the case, any proposition may be affirmed or denied, all proportions are either true (1’s) or false (0’s). All proportions are sentences but all sentences are not propositions. Propositions are factual contains three terms: subject, predicate and copula and are always in indicative or declarative mood. While sentence is a (...) grammatical entity, a unit of language that expresses a complete thought; a sentence may express a proposition, but is distinct from the proposition it may be used to express: categories, declarative sentences, exclamatory, imperative and interrogative sentences. Not all sentences are propositions, propositions express sentence. Sentence is a proposition only in condition when it bears truth values i.e. true or false. We use English sentences governed by imprecise rule to state the precise rules of proposition. In logic we use sentence as logical entity having propositional function but grammatical sentences are different from logical sentences while the former are having only two divisions namely subject and predicate and may express wishes, orders, surprise or facts and also have multiple subjects and predicates and the latter must be in a propositional form which states quantity of the subject and the quality of the proposition and multiple subjects and multiple predicate make the proposition multiple. (shrink)

Propositional logic, also known as sentential logic and statement logic, is the branch of logic that studies ways of joining and/or modifying entire propositions, statements or sentences to form more complicated propositions, statements or sentences, as well as the logical relationships and properties that are derived from these methods of combining or altering statements. In propositional logic, the simplest statements are considered as indivisible units, and hence, propositional logic does not study those logical properties and relations that depend (...) upon parts of statements that are not themselves statements on their own, such as the subject and predicate of a statement. The most thoroughly researched branch of propositional logic is classical truth-functional propositional logic, which studies logical operators and connectives that are used to produce complex statements whose truth-value depends entirely on the truth-values of the simpler statements making them up, and in which it is assumed that every statement is either true or false and not both. However, there are other forms of propositional logic in which other truth-values are considered, or in which there is consideration of connectives that are used to produce statements whose truth-values depend not simply on the truth-values of the parts, but additional things such as their necessity, possibility or relatedness to one another. (shrink)

This chapter argues that some have wanted to reserve the term 'propositional attitude' for states which are 'in principle accessible' to consciousness, or that are 'inferentially integrated' with other propositional attitudes. Some of the contention and research surrounding propositional attitudes and sentences ascribing them results from their importance to epistemology, philosophy of mind, and action theory. Perhaps the primary reason is the view that propositional attitudes are relations to propositions. On many views, propositions both are closely related to (...) meanings and are what is in the first instance true or false. The chapter talks about two most significant alternatives to relational accounts of attitude ascription: Relationism and Descriptivism. It concludes by reviews of Lewis's example and topic of belief de se, which involves a distinctive way of ascribing a property. All believers can self‐ascribe properties, and all properties are open to self‐ascription. (shrink)

In sections 1 through 5, I develop in detail what I call the standard theory of worlds and propositions, and I discuss a number of purported objections. The theory consists of five theses. The first two theses, presented in section 1, assert that the propositions form a Boolean algebra with respect to implication, and that the algebra is complete, respectively. In section 2, I introduce the notion of logical space: it is a field of sets that represents the (...) propositional structure and whose space consists of all and only the worlds. The next three theses, presented in sections 3, 4, and 5, respectively, guarantee the existence of logical space, and further constrain its structure. The third thesis asserts that the set of propositions true at any world is maximal consistent; the fourth thesis that any two worlds are separated by a proposition; the fifth thesis that only one proposition is false at every world. In sections 6 through 10, I turn to the problem of reduction. In sections 6 and 7, I show how the standard theory can be used to support either a reduction of worlds to propositions or a reduction of propositions to worlds. A number of proposition-based theories are developed in section 6, and compared with Adams's world-story theory. A world-based theory is developed in section?, and Stalnaker's account of the matter is discussed. Before passing judgment on the proposition based and world-based theories, I ask in sections 8 and 9 whether both worlds and propositions might be reduced to something else. In section 8, I consider reductions to linguistic entities; in section 9, reductions to unfounded sets. After rejecting the possibility of eliminating both worlds and propositions, I return in section 10 to the possibility of eliminating one in favor of the other. I conclude, somewhat tentatively, that neither worlds nor propositions should be reduced one to the other, that both worlds and propositions should be taken as basic to our ontology. (shrink)

This book articulates and defends Fregean realism, a theory of properties based on Frege's insight that properties are not objects, but rather the satisfaction conditions of predicates. Robert Trueman argues that this approach is the key not only to dissolving a host of longstanding metaphysical puzzles, such as Bradley's Regress and the Problem of Universals, but also to understanding the relationship between states of affairs, propositions, and the truth conditions of sentences. Fregean realism, Trueman suggests, ultimately leads to a (...) version of the identity theory of truth, the theory that true propositions are identical to obtaining states of affairs. In other words, the identity theory collapses the gap between mind and world. This book will be of interest to anyone working in logic, metaphysics, the philosophy of language or the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

No semantic theory satisfying certain natural constraints can identify the semantic contents of sentences (the propositions they express), with sets of circumstances in which the sentences are true–no matter how fine-grained the circumstances are taken to be. An objection to the proof is shown to fail by virtue of conflating model-theoretic consequence between sentences with truth-conditional consequence between the semantic contents of sentences. The error underlines the impotence of distinguishing semantics, in the sense of a truth-based theory of (...) logical consequence, and semantics, in the sense of a theory of meaning. (shrink)

This paper defends a new version of truthmaker non-maximalism. The central feature of the view is the notion of a default truth-value. I offer a novel explanation for default truth-values and use it to motivate a general approach to the relation between truth-value and ontology, which I call truth-value-maker theory. According to this view, some propositions are false unless made true, whereas others are true unless made false. A consequence of the theory is that negative existential truths (...) need no truthmakers and that positive existential falsehoods need no falsemakers. (shrink)

Richard Gaskin analyses what is distinctive about sentences and the propositions they express--what marks them off from mere aggregates of words and meanings respectively. Since he identifies the world with all the true and false propositions, his account has significant implications for our understanding of the nature of reality.

Philosophers widely agree that emotions may have or lack appropriateness or fittingness, which in the emotional domain is an analogue of truth. I defend de Sousa's account of emotional truth by arguing that emotions have cognitive content as digitalized evaluative perceptions of the particular object of emotion, in terms of the relevant formal property. I argue that an emotion is true if and only if there is an actual fit between the particular and the formal objects of emotion, and (...) the emotion's propositional content is semantically satisfied, or the target of the emotion exists. Emotions meet the syntactic and disciplinary requirements of minimally truth-apt states. Appropriate fit occurs when lower-level properties of particular objects of emotion provide sufficient warrant to make ascription of the relevant formal properties superassertable. (shrink)

Propositions - truths and falsehoods - are "eternal" objects of possible ("de dicto") belief and disbelief, potential points of agreement and disagreement. Accordingly the criterion of two sentence-tokens "expressing tiie same proposition" will be tiie logical impossibility of beheving (disbelieving) what one expresses without believing (disbelieving) what the other expresses. This involves an ultra-thight synonymity relation ("semantic equivalence") and a sharing of denotations as between corresponding Unguistic expressions in each. Only locutions containing names, indexicals, etc. which commit speakers to (...) the same purported existents can "express the same proposition", but Stephen Schiffer is wrong to argue that saying one believes such a proposition necessarily imputes any metalinguistic conceptions to one. Propositions lack simplicity-or-complexity and hence structure (because sometimes a conjunction is one of its conjuncts). Each true (false) proposition has "its own" fact which it asserts (denies). (shrink)

Propositions - truths and falsehoods - are "eternal" objects of possible ("de dicto") belief and disbelief, potential points of agreement and disagreement. Accordingly the criterion of two sentence-tokens "expressing tiie same proposition" will be tiie logical impossibility of beheving (disbelieving) what one expresses without believing (disbelieving) what the other expresses. This involves an ultra-thight synonymity relation ("semantic equivalence") and a sharing of denotations as between corresponding Unguistic expressions in each. Only locutions containing names, indexicals, etc. which commit speakers to (...) the same purported existents can "express the same proposition", but Stephen Schiffer is wrong to argue that saying one believes such a proposition necessarily imputes any metalinguistic conceptions to one. Propositions lack simplicity-or-complexity and hence structure (because sometimes a conjunction is one of its conjuncts). Each true (false) proposition has "its own" fact which it asserts (denies). (shrink)

The traditional conception of knowledge as justified true belief is refuted in two famous counterexamples by Edmund L. Gettier. Roderick M. Chisholm has attempted to rescue a version of the traditional conception by distinguishing between defective and nondefective kinds of justification, and redefining knowledge more specifically as nondefectively justified true belief. Chisholm's revised definition avoids Gettier's counterexamples, but goes too far in the opposite direction, imposing conditions that are too narrow and not jointly necessary for knowledge. Chisholm's definition (...) excludes some claims that intuitively constitute genuine knowledge1 by entailing that if a true belief is invalidated as knowledge when defectively justified by a total body of evidence that also makes evident at least one false proposition, then no knowledge whatsoever can be supported by the same evidence. An alternative analysis of knowledge is proposed, according to which the potential loophole between the state of affairs that justifies belief in a proposition, and the state of affairs that makes the proposition true, permitted by the traditional concept of knowledge and discovered by Gettier's counterexamples, is closed by redefining knowledge as semantically‐epistemically evidentially relevant justified true belief. (shrink)

For John Buridan, truth-bearers are assertions. This fact explains why the inference ‘p is true, therefore p’ may fail. On the one hand, the tense of the verb plus the time of utterance do not determine the time about which a sentence is intended to be true: the intention of the speaker is needed. On the other hand, since the meaning of vocal and written words is conventional, it may seem that they can be used with different meanings (...) on each side of the inference. While the antecedent may talk about a situation different from the present one, this doesn’t make it the actual situation of utterance, and the words have meanings only in the actual situation of use. Although such situations are different, in both of them we are asked to see the importance of identifying features of which the disquotational schema doesn’t keep track and that can only be specified in the context of use. (shrink)

Argument that Q∃ expresses more than one proposition: (1) Q∃ expresses the proposition that Q∃ expresses some proposition that isn’t true. ((E)) (2) If Q ∃ expresses only true propositions, then the proposition that Q ∃ expresses some proposition that isn’t true is true. ((1)) (3) If Q∃ expresses only true propositions, then some proposition expressed by Q∃ is not true. (2, T) (4) Some proposition expressed by Q ∃ is not (...) class='Hi'>true. ((3)) (5) The proposition that Q ∃ expresses some proposition that isn’t true is true. (4, T) (6) Q∃ expresses at least one true proposition. (1,5) (7) Q∃ expresses at least two propositions. (3, 6) (A parallel argument shows that Q∀ expresses both true and false propositions. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Pierre Le Morvan’s critique of my thesis that ignorance is lack of true belief rather than absence of knowledge. I argue that the distinction between dispositional and non-dispositional accounts of belief, as I made it in a previous paper, is correct as it stands. Also, I criticize the viability and the importance of Le Morvan’s distinction between propositional and factive ignorance. Finally, I provide two arguments in favor of the thesis that ignorance is (...) lack of true belief rather than absence of knowledge. (shrink)

According to the subjective view of lying, speakers can lie by asserting a true proposition, as long as they believe this proposition to be false. This view contrasts with the objective view, according to which lying requires the actual falsity of the proposition asserted. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to pairs of assertions that differ only in intuitively redundant content and to show that such pairs of assertions are a reason to favour the subjective view (...) of lying over the objective one. (shrink)

Our linguistic and inferential practices are said to implicate a kind of abstract object playing various roles traditionally attributed to propositions, and our predictive and explanatory success with this ‘‘proposition-talk’’ is held to underwrite a realistic interpretation of it. However, these very same practices pull us in different directions regarding the nature of propositions, frustrating the development of an adequate unified theory of them. I explain how one could retain proposition-talk, and the advantages of interpreting it as being (...) purportedly about propositions, even if problems about the identity conditions for propositions motivated a Quinean rejection of them. The non-error-theoretic solution is to understand proposition-talk in terms of semantic pretense. On this approach, talking as if there were propositions lets us put readily available logical and linguistic devices to new expressive purposes, providing a way to make indirectly certain complicated, genuinely true assertions we cannot make directly. Proposition-talk thus extends the expressive capacity of a language in a logico-syntactically conservative way. (shrink)

A correspondence theory of truth involves at least three constituents; the truth bearer, propositions, which stand in a relation of correspondence to the third element, the truth maker, some objects or fact with which the truth maker must correspond. Correspondence theories differ about the nature of truth makers, over whether one needs to include properties, and in particular over whether facts must be assumed in addition in order to give a correct account not merely of the conditions under which (...) propositions are true, but also what makes them true. Simple modal propositions state that objects necessarily or possibly have certain properties. What makes such propositions true? In this paper I want to consider various candidates for an account of the truth makers of modal propositions. After rejecting several alternatives that rely only on objects and properties, i.e., truth conditions, I will present several refinements of a fact based theory culminating in the view that truth makers for modal propositions are actual or non-actual facts which have facts and possible worlds as constituents. (shrink)

David Kaplan observed in Kaplan that the principle \\) cannot be verified at a world in a standard possible worlds model for a quantified bimodal propositional language. This raises a puzzle for certain interpretations of the operator Q: it seems that some proposition p is such that is not possible to query p, and p alone. On the other hand, Arthur Prior had observed in Prior that on pain of contradiction, ∀p is Q only if one true proposition is (...) Q and one false proposition is Q. The two observations are related: ∀p is elusive in that it is not possible for the proposition to be uniquely Q. Kaplan based his model-theoretic observation on Cantor’s theorem, but there is a less well-known link between this simple set-theoretic observation and Prior’s remark. We generalize the link to develop a heuristic designed to move from Cantor’s theorem to the observation that a variety of sentences of the bimodal language express propositions that cannot be Q uniquely. We highlight the analogy between some of these results and some set-theoretic antinomies and suggest that the phenomenon is richer than one may have anticipated. (shrink)

This article rebuts Ramsey's earlier theory, in 'Universals of Law and of Fact', of how laws of nature differ from other true generalisations. It argues that our laws are rules we use in judging 'if I meet an F I shall regard it as a G'. This temporal asymmetry is derived from that of cause and effect and used to distinguish what's past as what we can know about without knowing our present intentions.

The liar and kindred paradoxes show that we can derive contradictions if our language possesses sentences lending themselves to paradox and we reason classically from schema about truth: Sis true iffp, where the letter p is to be replaced with a sentence and the letter S with a name of that sentence. This article presents a theory of truth that keeps at the expense of classical logic. The theory is couched in a language that possesses paradoxical sentences. It incorporates (...) all the instances of the analogue of for that language and also includes other platitudes about truth. The theory avoids contradiction because its logical framework is an appropriately constructed nonclassical propositional logic. The logic and the theory are different from others that have been proposed for keeping, and the methods used in the main proofs are novel. (shrink)