Dear John and all others interested, (01)
I would like to switch from "truth and reality" to "what is a
proposition?" Here is what one of my philosophical dictionaries says: (02)
"In philosophy, but not in business and sexual activity, a proposition
is whatever can be asserted, denied, contended, maintained, assumed,
supported, implied, or presupposed. It is that which is expressed by a
typical indicative sentence. The same proposition may be expressed by
different sentences." (03)
John F. Sowa schrieb (but italics mine, IJ):
> But I would like to restate
> them in terms of propositions, although the word 'proposition' is
> also considered to be in some *need of clarification*. The definition
> of proposition that *I prefer* is one I stated in
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/logic/proposit.htm
>
> The basic idea is summarized in the abstract of that paper:
>
> Informally, different statements in different languages may mean
> "the same thing." Formally, that "thing," called a proposition,
> represents abstract, language-independent, semantic content.
> As an abstraction, a proposition has no physical embodiment that
> can be written or spoken. Only its statements in particular
> languages can be expressed as strings of symbols. To bring the
> informal notion of proposition within the scope of formal treatment,
> this paper proposes a formal definition: a proposition is defined
> as *an equivalence class of sentences in some formal language* L
> under some meaning-preserving translation (MPT) defined over the
> sentences of L. This paper defines a series of six MPTs f0,...,f5
> and recommends f4 as the most useful for most purposes.
> (04)
I have read your paper, understood (I think) your constructions, and
have no objections to your views - apart from the fact that I find it a
misnomer to call any of your six constructions a definition of
"proposition". Earlier in the discussion, I got the impression that both
of us were of the opinion that propositions are the primary truth-value
bearers, but "an equivalence class of sentences in a formal language"
cannot be a truth-value bearer. I have noted that you call your
definition a "formal definition" of proposition, but I think a more
adequate label would be "definition of the formal-logical counterpart to
propositions". You exemplify with FOL, but I wouldn't say that sentences
in FOL are truth-value bearers; they are forms for truth-value bearers.
That is, you bring out something in your paper, but you do not, as you
claim, *clarify* the traditional philosophical concept of "proposition". (05)
What do you (or someone else) say?
Ingvar (06)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (07)
|