John F. Sowa schrieb:
> Wacek and Ken,
>
> vQ> This encourages me to ask another question: do propositions
> > involve indexicals? (Would there be proposition-indexicals?)
> > Does the statement 'he is wise' correspond to a (number of)
> > proposition(s) about a particular individual at a particular
> > time each, or can it correspond to a proposition which still
> > does not have the 'he'-part resolved?
>
> KC> I think it's hard to consider any meaning of a proposition
> > like that without considering that it has an intended referent
> > for the indexical - that is, that it refers to a particular
> > individual.
>
> I agree with Ken.
> (01)
So do I, but this means that there is some distinction to be made (at
least) in relation to indexical sentences. I have once proposed that in
relation to a sentence such as 'he is wise' one should distinguish
between a 'sentence mening' and a 'used sentence meaning'. Only used
sentence meanings can express propositions and have truth-values, but of
course there is something that corresponds to a non-indexed 'he is
wise', too. (The idea is to be found in section 1 of my paper
"Performatives and Antiperformatives", which is linked to my home site
section 5. However, I am not the first one to have proposed such a
distinction. David Lewis has made practically the same distinction in
terms of 'sentence meaning' and 'sentence meaning at an index', see
'General Semantics', Synthese 1970.) (02)
Let me now apply this line of thought to the following quotation from vQ:
"The question, again, is about propositions. The sentence "no roses are
blue" was true some time ago, and is false now; but does it correspond
to the same proposition in both cases? Is it the proposition that
changed its truth value, or are we really dealing with two distinct
propositions: 'no roses are blue at t1', and 'no roses are blue at t2'?" (03)
I would say that there is only one *sentence meaning* "no roses are
blue", but two *used sentence meanings* and two propositions, one which
is true and one which is false. Propositions cannot change truth-values. (04)
best,
Ingvar (05)
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