Those who conceive logic as a science have generally favoured one of two alternative conceptions as to what the subject-matter of this science ought to be. On the one hand is the nowadays somewhat old-fashioned-seeming view of logic as the science of judgment, or of thinking or reasoning activities in general. On the other hand is the view of logic as a science of ideal meanings, 'thoughts', or 'propositions in themselves'. There is, however, a third alternative conception, which enjoyed only (...) a brief flowering in the years leading up to the first World War, but whose lingering presence can be detected in the background of more recent ontologising trends in logic, as for example in the 'situation semantics' of Barwise and Perry. This third conception sees logic as a science of special objects called 'Sachverhalte' or 'states of affairs'. A view of this sort is present in simplified form in the works of Meinong, but it received its definitive formulation in the writings of Adolf Reinach, a student of Husserl who is otherwise noteworthy for having anticipated, in a monograph of 1913, large chunks of what later became known as the theory of speech acts.(1). (shrink)

The famous “slingshot argument” developed by Church, Gödel, Quine and Davidson is often considered to be a formally strict proof of the Fregean conception that all true sentences, as well as all false ones, have one and the same denotation, namely their corresponding truth value: the true or the false. In this paper we examine the analysis of the slingshot argument by means of a non-Fregean logic undertaken recently by A.Wóitowicz and put to the test her claim that the slingshot (...) argument is in fact circular and presupposes what it intends to prove. We show that this claim is untenable. Nevertheless, the language of non-Fregean logic can serve as a useful tool for representing the slingshot argument, and several versions of the slingshot argument in non-Fregean logics are presented. In particular, a new version of the slingshot argument is presented, which can be circumvented neither by an appeal to a Russellian theory of definite descriptions nor by resorting to an analogous “Russellian” theory of λ–terms. (shrink)

The famous “slingshot argument” developed by Church, Gödel, Quine and Davidson is often considered to be a formally strict proof of the Fregean conception that all true sentences, as well as all false ones, have one and the same denotation, namely their corresponding truth value: the true or the false . In this paper we examine the analysis of the slingshot argument by means of a non-Fregean logic undertaken recently by A.Wóitowicz and put to the test her claim that the (...) slingshot argument is in fact circular and presupposes what it intends to prove. We show that this claim is untenable. Nevertheless, the language of non-Fregean logic can serve as a useful tool for representing the slingshot argument, and several versions of the slingshot argument in non-Fregean logics are presented. In particular, a new version of the slingshot argument is presented, which can be circumvented neither by an appeal to a Russellian theory of definite descriptions nor by resorting to an analogous “Russellian” theory of λ–terms. (shrink)

In The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle argues that there are two kinds of facts--some that are independent of human observers, and some that require..

Stephen Neale presents, in Facing Facts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), one convenient package containing his reasoned complaints against theories of facts and non-extensional connectives. The slingshot is a powerful argument (or better, it is a powerful family of arguments) which constrains theories of facts, propositions and non-extensional connectives by showing that some of these theories are rendered trivial. This book is the best place to find the state of the art on the slingshot and its implications for logic, language and (...) metaphysics. It provides a useful starting point for anyone who has wondered what all of the fuss about the slingshot amounts to. Neale shows that the fuss does amount to something, and that theories of facts must “face facts” and present an adequate response to the slingshot. However, Neale’s evaluation of the state of play for theories of facts is too pessimistic. As the book draws near to a close, Neale writes: As I have stressed, Russell’s Theory of Facts, according to which facts have properties as components, is safe. It is certainly tempting to draw the moral that if one wants non-collapsing facts one needs properties as components of facts. I have not attempted to prove this here, but I suspect it will be proved in due course. (page 210) Neale concludes that while theories which take facts to be structured entities are safe from slingshot arguments, and he suspects that this is the only kind of fact theory safe from slingshot-style collapse. If this were the case, then theories such as situation theories or accounts of truthmakers may well be threatened. However, Neale’s suspicion is ill-founded, as I shall soon show. Not only do Russellian theories of facts survive the slingshot unscathed, but so can theories of facts which take them to be unstructured entities. Furthermore, the way that this may be not only argued for, but proved can provide a new weapon in the armoury of the theorist investigating fact theories. (shrink)

This paper is a critical examination of Stephen Neale's *The Philosophical Significance of Godel's slingshot*. I am sceptical of the philosophical significance of Godel’s Slingshot (and of Slingshot arguments in general). In particular, I do not believe that Godel’s Slingshot has any interesting and important philosophical consequences for theories of facts or for referential treatments of definite descriptions. More generally, I do not believe that any Slingshot arguments have interesting and important philosophical consequences for theories of facts or for referential (...) treatments of definite descriptions. Friends of facts and referential treatments of definite descriptions can, and should, proceed with the construction of their theories, blithely ignoring the many Slingshots which now litter the landscape. (Of course, there may be other considerations which should give such theorists pause -- but those are other considerations.). (shrink)

A hallmark of correspondence theories of truth is the principle that sentences are made true by some truth-makers. A well-known objection to treating Tarski’s definition of truth as a correspondence theory has been put forward by Donald Davidson. He argued that Tarski’s approach does not relate sentences to any entities (like facts) to which true sentences might correspond. From the historical viewpoint, it is interesting to observe that Tarski’s philosophical teacher Tadeusz Kotarbinski advocated an ontological doctrine of reism which accepted (...) only concrete individuals and rejected all such abstract entities as facts, states of affairs, properties, and sets. Kotarbinski’s physicalism influenced Tarski who also avoided concepts like “fact” and “property” in his theory of truth, but—unlike Kotarbinski—he used freely set-theoretical terminology. In his mature work in model theory in the 1950s, Tarski used systematically the notion of a relational system (i.e., a domain of objects with designated elements, subsets, and relations). Wilfrid Hodges has argued that the notions of “structure” and “truth in a structure” appeared in Tarski’s work only in 1950. In my view, one can find the main ingredients of the model-theoretic account of truth already in the 1930s. These considerations suggest, against Davidson, that Tarski’s definition presupposes that material truth is always related to some kind of truth-maker. Further, facts as truth-makers can be reconstructed by employing the resources of model theory. (shrink)

A realist theory of truth for a class of sentences holds that there are entities in virtue of which these sentences are true or false. We call such entities ‘truthmakers’ and contend that those for a wide range of sentences about the real world are moments (dependent particulars). Since moments are unfamiliar, we provide a definition and a brief philosophical history, anchoring them in our ontology by showing that they are objects of perception. The core of our theory is the (...) account of truthmaking for atomic sentences, in which we expose a pervasive ‘dogma of logical form’, which says that atomic sentences cannot have more than one truthmaker. In contrast to this, we uphold the mutual independence of logical and ontological complexity, and the authors outline formal principles of truthmaking taking account of both kinds of complexity. (shrink)

In the paper there is presented the semantic interpretation of idealism/ realism controversy which is one of the most essential issues in Ingarden’s phenomenological project of ontology. The procedure of semantic paraphrase which is contemporary developed by Wolen´ ski, is the main interpretative tool. In the central part of the paper, there is formulated the formal theory of the semantic framework underlying idealism/realism discourse. Finally, there are formulated some notes showing that intentional conception of negation may be used for defending (...) various idealistic positions. (shrink)

The main purpose of the paper concerns the question of the existence of hard mathematical facts as truth-makers of mathematical sentences. The paper defends the standpoint according to which hard mathematical facts do not exist in semantic models of mathematical theories. The argumentative line in favour of the defended thesis proceeds as follows: slingshot arguments supply us with some reasons to reject various ontological theories of mathematical facts; there are two ways of blocking these arguments: through the rejection of the (...) principle of extensionality for individual terms or through the rejection of the principle of Wittgenstein; the first way cannot be accepted because it leads to the practice of softening mathematical facts; the second way, called fine-graining facts, cannot be accepted because it also results in the practice of softening facts. Hence, only soft mathematical facts can be introduced into semantic models of mathematical theories. Because they should be rather interpreted as mental representations of mathematical objects, they no longer satisfy the semantic role of truth-makers in relation to mathematical sentences. The argument formulated in the paper is based on the analysis of mathematical extensions of the basic non-Fregean logic. Sixty-two definitions of potential fact-identity connectives are also presented. The paper's conclusion may be interpreted as undermining the situational paradigm of building semantics for mathematical languages. (shrink)

We show that there are continuum many different extensions of SCI (the basic theory of non-Fregean propositional logic) that lie below WF (the Fregean extension) and are closed under substitution. Moreover, continuum many of them are independent from WB (the Boolean extension), continuum many lie above WB and are independent from WH (the Boolean extension with only two values for the equality relation), and only countably many lie between WH and WF.

I lay down a system of structural rules for various notions of ground and establish soundness and completeness.

In the paper I exploit Frege's notions of sense and synonymity in order to amend the slingshot argument. The main emendation is to replace the assumption about logical equivalence by an assumption about synonymity. While the replaced assumption begs the question about the reference of sentences, the replacing assumption has much more theoretical support from Frege's general conception of sense and reference and the relation between them. In the paper I use a specific notion of synonymity which I believe is (...) faithful to Frege's discussion of the subject. I notice that if a stronger notion of synonymity is used, my version of the argument fails. The failure is explained by showing that this stronger notion of synonymity enables the assignment of facts, and not truth values, as the references of sentences. (shrink)

In the paper I exploit Frege's notions of sense and synonymity in order to amend the slingshot argument. The main emendation is to replace the assumption about logical equivalence by an assumption about synonymity. While the replaced assumption begs the question about the reference of sentences, the replacing assumption has much more theoretical support from Frege's general conception of sense and reference and the relation between them. In the paper I use a specific notion of synonymity which I believe is (...) faithful to Frege's discussion of the subject. I notice that if a stronger (and to my mind implausible) notion of synonymity is used, my version of the argument fails. The failure is explained by showing that this stronger notion of synonymity enables the assignment of facts, and not truth values, as the references of sentences. (shrink)

We call a semantic theory 'classical' if it includes the assertions that (I) a function V assigning semantic value maps object language proper names into some set D, (ii) V maps object language atomic sentences into some set F, and (iii) the extension of any object language unary predicate is a member of the power set of D. Two theorems can be proven which assert that any classical theory which includes certain other assumptions assigns the same member of F to (...) every true object language sentence. Many accept the following argument: (1) every plausible semantic theory is classical and contains the assertions named in the theorems, (2) if the semantic value of declarative sentences is a representation or representational then, some different true sentences differ in what they represent, hence, declarative sentences are not representational. I show how to avoid the conclusion by arguing for the falsity of (1). (shrink)

Causal slingshots are formal arguments advanced by proponents of an event ontology of token-level causation which, in the end, are intended to show two things: (i) The logical form of statements expressing causal dependencies on token level features a binary predicate ‘‘... causes ...’’ and (ii) that predicate takes events as arguments. Even though formalisms are only revealing with respect to the logical form of natural language statements, if the latter are shown to be adequately captured within a corresponding formalism, (...) proponents of slingshots usually take the adequacy of their formalizations for granted without justifying it. The first part of this paper argues that the most discussed version of a causal slingshot, viz. the one e.g. presented by Davidson (Essays on actions and events. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980), can indeed be refuted for relying on an inadequate formal apparatus. In contrast, the formal means of Gödel’s (The philosophy of Betrand Russell. New York, Tudor, 1944) often neglected slingshot are shown to stand on solid ground in the second part of the paper. Nonetheless, I contend that Gödel’s slingshot does only half the work friends of event causation would like it to do. It provides good reasons for (i) but not for (ii). (shrink)

According to the standard opinions in the literature, blocking the unacceptable consequences of the notorious slingshot argument requires imposing constraints on the metaphysics of facts or on theories of definite descriptions (or class abstracts). This paper argues that both of these well-known strategies to rebut the slingshot overshoot the mark. The slingshot, first and foremost, raises the question as to the adequate logical formalization of statements about facts, i.e. of factual contexts. It will be shown that a rigorous application of (...) Quine’s maxim of shallow analysis to formalizations of factual contexts paves the way for an account of formalizing such contexts which blocks the slingshot without ramifications for theories of facts or definite descriptions. (shrink)

This highly acclaimed book is a major contribution to the philosophy of language as well as a systematic interpretation of Frege, indisputably the father of ...

How does metaphysical grounding interact with the truth-functions? I argue that the answer varies according to whether one has a worldly conception or a conceptual conception of grounding. I then put forward a logic of worldly grounding and give it an adequate semantic characterisation.

During the realist revival in the early years of this century, philosophers of various persuasions were concerned to investigate the ontology of truth. That is, whether or not they viewed truth as a correspondence, they were interested in the extent to which one needed to assume the existence of entities serving some role in accounting for the truth of sentences. Certain of these entities, such as the Sätze an sich of Bolzano, the Gedanken of Frege, or the propositions of Russell (...) and Moore, were conceived as the bearers of the properties of truth and falsehood. Some thinkers however, such as Russell, Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, and Husserl in the Logische Untersuchungen, argued that instead of, or in addition to, truth-bearers, one must assume the existence of certain entities in virtue of which sentences and/or propositions are true. Various names were used for these entities, notably 'fact', 'Sachverhalt', and 'state of affairs'. (1) In order not to prejudge the suitability of these words we shall initially employ a more neutral terminology, calling any entities which are candidates for this role truth-makers. (shrink)

The paper presents a new argument supporting the ontological standpoint according to which there are no mathematical facts in any set theoretic model (world) constructed on the grounds of second order arithmetical theories founded upon set theory. Slingshot arguments directed against facts, situations and other propositional entities are usually blocked by rejecting one of the main inference rules used in various versions of this argument. Authors distinguish two types of main inference rules used in these variants: (i) for non-propositional expressions: (...) iota-conversion rules (ι-conv), iota-substitution rules (ι-subs), lambda-conversion principle (λ-conv); and (ii) for propositional expressions: the principle of substitutivity for logical equivalents (PSLE). Even if strategies for defending facts by the rejection of one of the mentioned rules are accepted, it may be shown that the acceptance of the requirement that mathematical facts (situations or truth-makers) differing with regard to their constituents are different facts, leads to the contradiction in meta-theories of set theoretic models for first order arithmetical theories. In the paper, a new type of slingshot argument is presented, which may be called hyper-slingshot . The difference between meta-theoretical hyper-slingshots and conventional slingshots consists in the fact that the former are formulated in the semantic meta-language of mathematical theories without the use of the iota-operator or the name-forming lambda-operator, whereas the latter require for their expression at least one of these non-standard term-operators. Furthermore, in hyper-slingshots PSLE is not used, whereas in conventional slingshots, PSLE plays a crucial inferential role. Hyper-slingshots implement simpler language tools in comparison with those used in conventional slingshots. (shrink)

Quine argued that any context allowing substitution of logical equivalents and coextensive terms is truth functional. We argue that Quine's proof for this claim is flawed.

In the paper there is presented the argument for the situational paradigm of theory of language. In comparison to the nominativistic semantics it is argued in the paper that the propositional semantics is a better tool of explaining various speech acts in which the principle of compositionality is collapsed. In the paper there are also described referential mechanisms of metaphorical speech acts. In accordance with these mechanisms the metaphorical status of speech acts is determined by the collapse of Fregean referential (...) compositionality of speech acts. In the paper there are constructed two notions of compositionality. First of them may be called classical Fregean concept of compositionality which establishes a semantic correlate of a complex speech act on a functional basis of semantic correlates of constituents of a complex speech act. According to the second notion of compositionality, correlates of constituents of a complex speech act are recursively deter-mined by a correlate of a complex speech act. Mataphorical speech acts possess such a property that correlates of their constituent expressions are determined in processes of de-coding by recursive compositionality functions. Maximal metaphors are speech acts in which recursive as well as Fregean compositionality collapse. In the paper it is argued that the traditional nominativistic semantics is not able to explain communicational functioning of metaphorical speech acts. That is why the conclusion of the paper resolves itself to the thesis that the situational semantic paradigm which should base on recursive notion of compositionality, is better than the nominativistic paradigm. (shrink)