🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Bztz5L.DMM@casper.cs.uct.ac.za>, nhorne@casper.cs.uct.ac.za (N E
Horne) said:

>Somewhere along the "Truth" thread, Jamie writes:
>
>
>" Consider the sentence which would come first on an alphabetized
>  list of 100-word sentences of English.
>
>  It is either a true sentence of English or a false one. No one has
>  ever interpreted it (I'll wager). With the possible exception of
>  one of us, no one ever will. "
>
>That something's amiss becomes clear when you consider that in the event of
your
>sentence being an imperative (the requirement of alphabetic order may yield
>something like "Abandon aardvarks!" at the top of your list) or a question
>the sentence is neither true nor false.

Quite so. I should have said, "indicative sentences."

>In fact, it is widely held that propositions, as opposed to sentences, are the
>bearers of truth value.

In fact, it is not.
In fact, it is widely held that propositions, *in addition to sentences*,
are the bearers of truth values.

Many people, including theorists, do not like propositions at all.
I do. But in the spirit of my ontological liberalism, I try to
make as many accomodations for the propositional skeptics as I can.
This liberalism stood me well in a brief conversation (resulting
from one of my postings to this news group) with a Wittgensteinian,
about propositions unexpressable in English.

Even so, I take your point, approximately.

>The process of interpretaion involves nothing less
>than establishing a correspondence between sentences and statements (which
>also have no truth value) and if possible (and this is not possible in the
>cases mentioned above) between statements and propositions.

Again, I agree with the spirit.
I would not call interpretation a "process." There need be no literal
process of interpretation in order for a sentence to be interpreted.
An interpretation (thought of as a mathematical function) once
stipulated, no one actually has to apply it. Thus, we may think
of the alphabetically first 100-word INDICATIVE (nb my concession)
sentence of English as interpreted, and as being true or false,
even though there has never been any intepretive process for it.

>Consider also what truth value you would care to assign to ambiguous
sentences.

Again, I take the point.

I am inclined to think of ambiguous sentences along the lines of
indexical sentences. Is that sufficient?

Jamie

>Neil Horne
>Cape Town