Our aim in the present paper is to investigate, from the standpoint of truth-theoretic semantics, English tense, temporal designators and quantifiers, and other expressions we use to relate ourselves and other things to the temporal order. Truth-theoretic semantics provides a particularly illuminating standpoint from which to discuss issues about the semantics of tense, and their relation to thoughts at, and about, times. Tense, and temporal modifiers, contribute systematically to conditions under which sentences we utter are true or (...) false. A Tarski-style truth-theoretic semantics, by requiring explicitly represented truth conditions, helps to sharpen questions about the function of tense, and to deepen our insight into the contribution the tenses and temporal modifiers make to what we say by using them. (shrink)

In this paper I try to show that semantics can explain word-to-world relations and that sentences can have meanings that determine truth-conditions. Critics like Chomsky typically maintain that only speakers denote, i.e., only speakers, by using words in one way or another, represent entities or events in the world. However, according to their view, individual acts of denotations are not explained just by virtue of speakers’ semantic knowledge. Against this view, I will hold that, in the typical cases considered, (...) semantic knowledge can account for the denotational uses of words of individual speakers. (shrink)

An argument is developed at some length to show that any semantical theory which treats superficially nonperformative sentences as being governed by performative prefaces at some level of underlying structure must either leave those sentences semantically uninterpreted or assign them the wrong truth-conditions. Several possible escapes from this dilemma are examined; it is tentatively concluded that such hypotheses as the Ross-Lakoff-Sadock Performative Analysis should be rejected despite their attractions.

Natural language conditionals seem to be subject to three logical requirements: they invalidate Antecedent Strengthening, they validate so-called Simplification of Disjunctive Antecedents, and they allow for the replacement of logically equivalent clauses in antecedent position. Unfortunately, these requirements are jointly inconsistent. Conservative solutions to the puzzle drop Simplification, treating it as a pragmatic inference. I show that pragmatic accounts of Simplification fail, and develop a truthmaker semantics for conditionals that captures all the relevant data. Differently from existing truthmaker (...) class='Hi'>semantics, my semantics extends, rather than replaces, standard possible worlds semantics. The main innovation is the notion of a truthmaker in play: this notion is cognitive, rather than metaphysical, and can be defined in a purely syntactic way. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall provide a novel response to the argument from context-sensitivity against truth-conditional semantics. It is often argued that the contextual influences on truth-conditions outstrip the resources of standard truth-conditional accounts, and so truth-conditional semantics rests on a mistake. The argument assumes that truth-conditional semantics is legitimate if and only if natural language sentences have truth-conditions. I shall argue that this assumption is mistaken. Truth-conditional analyses should be viewed as idealised approximations of the complexities (...) of natural language meaning. From this perspective, disparity between the scientific model and its real-world target is to be expected. I elaborate on what such an approach to semantics would look like. (shrink)

In his “Meaning and Formal Semantics in Generative Grammar” (Erkenntnis 2015, 61–87), Stephen Schiffer argues that truth-conditional semantics is a poor fit with generative linguistics. In particular, he thinks that it fails to explain speakers’ abilities to understand the sentences of their language. In its place, he recommends his “Best Bet Theory”—a theory which aims to directly explain speakers’ abilities to mean things by their utterances and know what others mean by their utterances. I argue that Schiffer does (...) not provide good reason to prefer the Best Bet Theory over truth-conditional semantics in the context of generative linguistics. First, his negative arguments against the truth-conditional approach are unpersuasive, and second, the Best Bet Theory involves an explanatory circularity which makes it unfit for linguistic theorizing. I conclude that the Best Bet Theory is thus not even a viable competitor to truth-conditional semantics in generative linguistics. (shrink)

Truth conditional semantics is the project of ‘determining a way of assigning truth conditions to sentences based on A) the extension of their constituents and B) their syntactic mode of combination’. This research program has been subject to objections that take the form of underdetermination arguments, an influential instance of which is presented by Travis: … consider the words ‘The leaf is green,’ speaking of a given leaf, and its condition at a given time, used so as to (...) mean what they do mean in English. How many distinct things might be said in words with all that true of them? Many.… Suppose a Japanese maple leaf, turned brown, was painted green for a decoration. In sorting leaves by colour, one might truly call this one green. In describing leaves to help identify their species, it might, for all the paint, be false to call it that. (shrink)

Davidson approaches the notions of meaning and interpretation with the aim of characterizing semantic competence in the syntactically characterized natural language. The objective is to provide a truth-theory for a language, generating T-sentences expressed in the semantic metalanguage, so that each sentence of the object language receives an appropriate interpretation. Proceeding within the constraints of referential semantics, I will argue for the viability of reconstructing the notion of linguistic meaning within the Tarskian theory of reference. However, the view proposed (...) here involves a revision of Davidson’s con-ception of the object of semantic investigation. Taking (idealized) language-theories as the proper object of semantic characterization, provides solutions to outstanding problems in Davidson’s views, better approximates the practice in standard model-theoretic semantics, and incorporates the elements of semantic competence sought for in tradi¬tional theories of lexical analysis. Sources of evidence beyond those emphasized by Davidson will be invoked in order to allow for the selection of interpre¬tive T-sentences. In the final section, possible Quinean objections will be considered. (shrink)

An argument is developed at some length to show that any semantical theory which treats superficially nonperformative sentences as being governed by performative prefaces at some level of underlying structure must either leave those sentences semantically uninterpreted or assign them the wrong truth-conditions. Several possible escapes from this dilemma are examined; it is tentatively concluded that such hypotheses as the Ross-Lakoff-Sadock “Performative Analysis” should be rejected despite their attractions.

Proponents of the projection strategy take an epistemic rule for the evaluation of English conditionals, the Ramsey test, as clue to the truth-conditional semantics of conditionals. They also construe English conditionals as stronger than the material conditional. Given plausible assumptions, however, the Ramsey test induces the semantics of the material conditional. The alleged link between Ramsey test and truth conditions stronger than those of the material conditional can be saved by construing conditionals as ternary, rather than binary, propositional (...) functions with a hidden contextual parameter. But such a ternary construal raises problems of its own. (shrink)

A criticism is offered of the chief argument employed by Davidson to debunk the notion of “metaphorical meaning”, which exploits the static nature of standard truth-conditional semantics. We argue, first, that Davidson's argument fails, and go on to suggest, secondly, that truth-conditional semantics would profit if the static feature were abandoned and were replaced by a processual, dynamic conception of meaning. We try to show that this processual aspect can be captured without making the ensuing semantic theory open (...) to the charge of psychologism. (shrink)

The paper offers a critical review of the role played by lexical meaning in the earlier stages of philosophical semantics and truth-conditional semantics. I shall address, both historically and theoretically, the relative neglect of lexical semantics within these fields, and argue that the approach to word meaning fostered in extensional frameworks is overall inconsistent with the customary assumption that truth-theoretic semantics can be considered a semantic theory proprio sensu.

In my article, I present a new version of a probabilistic truth prescribing semantics for natural language indicative conditionals. The proposed truth conditions can be paraphrased as follows: an indicative conditional is true if the corresponding conditional probability is high and the antecedent is positively probabilistically relevant for the consequent or the probability of the antecedent of the conditional equals 0. In the paper, the truth conditions are defended and some of the logical properties of the proposed semantics (...) are described. (shrink)

In this paper, I re-examine Dummett's arguments against realism and, most notably, those against truth conditional semantics. Dummett claims that a (realist) truth conditional meaning theory will invariably encounter limitations when accounting for the meanings of the statements of the so-called "disputed class", and so must be rejected in favour of a theory of meaning couched in terms of proof or verification. The first part of this paper seeks to faithfully reconstruct Dummett's position on meaning. The subsequent parts are (...) critical of this position. In particular, I attempt to expose the shortcomings of an antirealist theory of meaning on the one hand, and then show how truth conditional semantics (be they realist or not) emerge relatively unscathed from Dummett's criticism on the other. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that while truth-conditional semantics in generative linguistics provides lots of good semantic explanations, truth-conditions do not play an important role in these explanations. That is, the fact that expressions have the particular truthconditional contents they have does not even partly explain facts about semantic phenomena. Rather, explanations of semantic phenomena appeal to extra-truth-conditional properties attributed to expressions via their lexical entries. Focusing on recent truth-conditional work on gradable adjectives and degree modifiers by Kennedy and (...) McNally, I show that the best explanations of semantic anomaly and entailment for these expressions are non-truth-conditional—they do not depend on the fact that these expressions have the truth-conditional contents they have. I then provide reasons for thinking that the point generalizes beyond gradable adjectives and degree modifiers to other expressions, and beyond anomaly and entailment to other semantic phenomena. Truth-conditional content, generally, is extrasemantic. (shrink)

I define 'skim semantics' to be a Davidson-style truth-conditional semantics combined with a variety of deflationism about truth. The expressive role of truth in truth-conditional semantics precludes at least some kinds of skim semantics; thus I reject the idea that the challenge to skim semantics derives solely from Davidson's explanatory ambitions, and in particular from the 'truth doctrine', the view that the concept of truth plays a central explanatory role in Davidsonian theories of meaning for (...) a language. The fate of skim semantics is not determined by the fate of the truth doctrine, so rejecting the truth doctrine does not in itself open the way to skim semantics. I establish my thesis by showing that some recently proposed versions of skim semantics fail because of truth's expressive role. I also discuss the conditions that might permit skim semantics. (shrink)

I define ‘skim semantics’ to be a Davidson‐style truth‐conditional semantics combined with a variety of deflationism about truth. The expressive role of truth in truth‐conditional semantics precludes at least some kinds of skim semantics; thus I reject the idea that the challenge to skim semantics derives solely from Davidson's explanatory ambitions, and in particular from the ‘truth doctrine’, the view that the concept of truth plays a central explanatory role in Davidsonian theories of meaning for (...) a language. The fate of skim semantics is not determined by the fate of the truth doctrine, so rejecting the truth doctrine does not in itself open the way to skim semantics. I establish my thesis by showing that some recently proposed versions of skim semantics fail because of truth's expressive role. I also discuss the conditions that might permit skim semantics. (shrink)

Davidson’s Surprise argument promises to resolve a dispute that has arisen in contemporary formal semantics over the proper semantic value for a semantic theory. At issue are doubts that Pietroski raises about the compositionality of truth-conditions, and thereby about truthconditional semantics, which treats a truth value as the semantic value for a sentence. The dispute is recalcitrant because, as I show, Pietroski’s evidence that truth-conditions are not compositional can be explained away with attention to Cappelen and Lepore’s distinction (...) between the truth of what is semantically expressed by an utterance and the truth of its speech act content. While the Surprise argument would, if it worked, support truth-conditional semantics, I demonstrate that it fails; in fact, it is peculiarly vulnerable to Pietroski’s concerns. (shrink)

This paper endorses and defends M. J. Cresswell's view that the distinction drawn in linguistic semantics between strictly "logical" implication and merely lexical implication is bogus, and then explores the bad consequences that concession has for the Davidsonian semantic program. A pattern of semantic explanation made famous by Davidson's "The logical form of action sentences" is shown to be far less interesting than has been thought.

According to orthodox semantics, to know the meaning of a sentence is to know its truth-conditions. Against this view I observe that we typically do not know the truth-conditions of the sentences we understand. We do not know the truth-conditions, for instance, of empty definite descriptions, non-declaratives, subjunctive conditionals, causal ascriptions, belief ascriptions, probability statements, figurative language, category mistakes, normative judgments, or vague statements. Appealing to tacit knowledge does not help, for the problem goes beyond our inability to articulate (...) complete truth-conditions: even full knowledge of the world’s condition would leave us unable to say whether an arbitrary sentence was true or false. (shrink)

This book seeks to bring together the pragmatic theory of 'meaning as use' with the traditional semantic approach that considers meaning in terms of truth conditions. Daniel Gutzmann's new approach captures the entire meaning of complex expressions and overcomes the empirical gaps and conceptual problems associated with previous analyses.

IntroductionThe project of giving an account of meaning in natural languages goes largely by assigning truth-conditional content to sentences. I will call the view that sentences have truth-conditional content propositionalism as it is common to identify the truth-conditional content of a sentence with the proposition it expresses. This content plays an important role in our explanations of the speech-acts, attitude ascriptions, and the meaning of sentences when they appear as parts of longer sentences. Much work in philosophy of language and (...) linguistics semantics over the last half-century has aimed to characterize the truth-conditional content of different aspects of language.There are different kinds of worries one might have about this project. There are general methodological worries about truth-conditional semantics that have had some currency in the philosophical literature. In my view, the enormous progress in semantics made in its brief history suggests these are misplaced. Ho .. (shrink)

In previous published research (“Conditionals and Inferential Connections: A Hypothetical Inferential Theory,” Cognitive Psychology, 2018), we investigated experimentally what role the presence and strength of an inferential connection between a conditional’s antecedent and consequent plays in how people process that conditional. Our analysis showed the strength of that connection to be strongly predictive of whether participants evaluated the conditional as true, false, or neither true nor false. In this article, we re-analyse the data from our previous research, now focussing on (...) the semantics of conditionals rather than on how they are processed. Specifically, we use those data to compare the main extant semantics with each other and with inferentialism, a semantics according to which the truth of a conditional requires the presence of an inferential connection between the conditional’s component parts. (shrink)

The epistemic modal auxiliaries must and might are vehicles for expressing the force with which a proposition follows from some body of evidence or information. Standard approaches model these operators using quantificational modal logic, but probabilistic approaches are becoming increasingly influential. According to a traditional view, must is a maximally strong epistemic operator and might is a bare possibility one. A competing account—popular amongst proponents of a probabilisitic turn—says that, given a body of evidence, must \ entails that \\) is (...) high but non-maximal and might \ that \\) is significantly greater than 0. Drawing on several observations concerning the behavior of must, might and similar epistemic operators in evidential contexts, deductive inferences, downplaying and retractions scenarios, and expressions of epistemic tension, I argue that those two influential accounts have systematic descriptive shortcomings. To better make sense of their complex behavior, I propose instead a broadly Kratzerian account according to which must \ entails that \ = 1\) and might \ that \ > 0\), given a body of evidence and a set of normality assumptions about the world. From this perspective, must and might are vehicles for expressing a common mode of reasoning whereby we draw inferences from specific bits of evidence against a rich set of background assumptions—some of which we represent as defeasible—which capture our general expectations about the world. I will show that the predictions of this Kratzerian account can be substantially refined once it is combined with a specific yet independently motivated ‘grammatical’ approach to the computation of scalar implicatures. Finally, I discuss some implications of these results for more general discussions concerning the empirical and theoretical motivation to adopt a probabilisitic semantic framework. (shrink)

The literature on indicative conditionals contains two appealing views. The first is the selectional view: on this view, conditionals operate by selecting a single possibility, which is used to evaluate the consequent. The second is the informational view: on this view, conditionals don’t express propositions, but rather impose constraints on information states of speakers. Both views are supported by strong arguments, but they are incompatible on their standard formulations. Hence it appears that we have to choose between mutually exclusive options. (...) But the options are not exclusive. This paper develops a theory of the semantics and assertability of conditionals that is both selectional and informational. The theory vindicates the signature inferences of both selectional and informational theories, including so-called Conditionals Excluded Middle and principles about the interplay between conditionals and ‘might’. It also predicts some interesting and puzzling facts about the assertion of conditionals. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to offer a compositional semantics for subjunctive and indicative will conditionals, and to derive the projection properties of the types of conditionals we consider and in particular those of counterfactual conditionals. It is argued that subjunctive conditionals are "bare" conditional embedded under temporal and aspectural operators, which constrain the interpretation of the modal operators in the embedded conditional. Furthermore, it is argued that a theory of presupposition projection à la Heim together with the (...) present proposal about their logical form explains the projection facts. (shrink)

Conditionals with conditional constituents pose challenges for _the Thesis_, the idea that the probability of a conditional is the corresponding conditional probability. This note is concerned with two proposals for overcoming those challenges, both inspired by early work of van Fraassen: the _Bernoulli Semantics_ associated with Stalnaker and Jeffrey, and augmented with a mechanism for obtaining “local probabilities” by Kaufmann; and a proposal by Bacon which I dub _Ordinal Semantics_. Despite differences in mathematical details and emphasis of presentation, both proposals (...) lend themselves for use as a basis for a modal-theoretic interpretation of embedded conditionals. The goal of this note is to compare the two frameworks by implementing a model for the interpretation of conditionals in each, based on the same underlying probability model for non-conditional sentences. I show that in the Ordinal model, certain sentences are assigned probabilities that do not accord with intuitions. This problem is familiar from the literature on Bernoulli models and can be addressed by introducing Kaufmann-style local probabilities into Ordinal models. I then show that Bernoulli Semantics has other limitations, in that it assigns probabilities in violation of the Thesis to certain very complex formulas. The upshot is that a fusion of the theories may be our best shot at getting the predictions right. (shrink)

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, Volume 10, Issue 1, Page 42-52, March 2021.

This thesis extends Kit Fine's truthmaker semantics for counterfactuals to indicative conditionals. First, I provide Fine's truthmaker semantics and his extension to counterfactuals. Then I introduce a notion of context state into the semantics and provide the verification-conditions for indicative conditionals by employing this notion of context state. Afterwards, I turn to the logic of indicative conditionals under exact semantics and discuss the principles and inference rules which raise disagreements between variably strict and strict conditionals accounts. (...) The account I provide shows its promise by validating a plausible combination of principles and strikes a balance between variably strict and strict conditional theories. I discuss certain principles in logic of indicative conditionals under exact semantics in detail and show how the present account validates the plausible combination of them. In the end, I draw comparisons between the viable theories for indicatives and the present one, and argue that the present account takes the advantage in several respects. (shrink)

The logic of Conditional Beliefs has been introduced by Board, Baltag, and Smets to reason about knowledge and revisable beliefs in a multi-agent setting. In this article both the semantics and the proof theory for this logic are studied. First, a natural semantics forCDLis defined in terms of neighbourhood models, a multi-agent generalisation of Lewis’ spheres models, and it is shown that the axiomatization ofCDLis sound and complete with respect to this semantics. Second, it is shown that (...) the neighbourhood semantics is equivalent to the original one defined in terms of plausibility models, by means of a direct correspondence between the two types of models. On the basis of neighbourhood semantics, a labelled sequent calculus forCDLis obtained. The calculus has strong proof-theoretic properties, in particular admissibility of contraction and cut, and it provides a decision procedure for the logic. Furthermore, its semantic completeness is used to obtain a constructive proof of the finite model property of the logic. Finally, it is shown that other doxastic operators can be easily captured within neighbourhood semantics. This fact provides further evidence of the naturalness of neighbourhood semantics for the analysis of epistemic/doxastic notions. (shrink)

Any semantic theory is bound to presume some structure in the messages it analyses, and the success of the theory depends on getting this structure right. But discovering this structure is the business of grammar. Therefore grammar is a necessary preliminary to semantics. Semantic theories of conditionals vividly illustrate this. All presume a provably untenable ternary structure: antecedent, operator, consequent. And all can be shown committed as a result to a thoroughly unbelievable set of connections between sentences and their (...) informational burdens. Actually, a conditional has five immediate factors, none of them an antecedent or a consequent. (shrink)

Conditional structures lie at the heart of the sciences, humanities, and everyday reasoning. It is hence not surprising that conditional logics – logics specifically designed to account for natural language conditionals – are an active and interdisciplinary area. The present book gives a formal and a philosophical account of indicative and counterfactual conditionals in terms of Chellas-Segerberg semantics. For that purpose a range of topics are discussed such as Bennett’s arguments against truth value based semantics for indicative conditionals.