🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <71kqssj@lynx.unm.edu> 
lgorbet@carina.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY) writes:

>In article <1992Nov17.162358.22391@guinness.idbsu.edu>
>holmes@garnet.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:

RH:
>>I agree with Mikhail that logic is a moral obligation, but I don't
>>think that sentences have "meanings" (the sentences themselves do fine
>>as propositions, and refer to their truth-values).  It is possible to
>>analyze the reference of sentences formally, and no "meanings" prove
>>to be needed (and this is on the level of semantics, not syntax).

Truth-functional semantics is still concerned with meanings.

LPG:
>So sentences which differ in that the words _radius_, _hypotenuse_,
>_chord_ (etc.) are interchanged are all synonymous, since these terms have
>identical reference in all cases (since each line segment in the
>Euclidean plane is a radius, is a hypotenuse,....).  My point is that
>reduction of meaning to reference gives up most of the reason we have
>a word _meaning_ in the first place.

Surely expressions like `radius', etc., are best thought of as
predicates (as in `radius of ...'), rather than singular terms.  On
the other hand, there are plenty of singular terms which ought to be
considered as interchangeable _salva veritate_ and therefore _salva
significatione_ by the extensionalist, viz. `the even prime number',
`the positive root of the equation "x^2-4=0"', `the greatest integer
n, for which the diophantine equation "x^n+y^n=z^n" has solutions'
(assuming the truth of FLT), `the number of bullet scars on Mikhail
Zeleny', `Alonzo Church's favorite number', or even `the integer
bound of Dan Quayle's college GPA'.  The possibilities are endless...

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."