Unity through truth

Synthese 196 (4):1425-1452 (2019)
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Abstract

Renewed worries about the unity of the proposition have been taken as a crucial stumbling block for any traditional conception of propositions. These worries are often framed in terms of how entities independent of mind and language can have truth conditions: why is the proposition that Desdemona loves Cassio true if and only if she loves him? I argue that the best understanding of these worries shows that they should be solved by our theory of truth and not our theory of content. Specifically, I propose a version of the redundancy theory according to which ‘it is true that Desdemona loves Cassio’ expresses the same proposition as ‘Desdemona loves Cassio’. Surprisingly, this variant of the redundancy theory treats ‘is true’ as an ordinary predicate of the language, thereby defusing many standard criticisms of the redundancy theory.

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Bryan Pickel
University of Glasgow

Citations of this work

Propositions as Structured Cognitive Event‐Types.Wayne A. Davis - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (3):665-692.
Arbitrary reference, numbers, and propositions.Michele Palmira - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):1069-1085.
Unity and Application.Geoffrey Hall - 2021 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 8.

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Mind and World.John McDowell - 1994 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
A World of States of Affairs.D. M. Armstrong - 1997 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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