🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1gib6mINN76i@cat.cis.Brown.EDU> PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie) writes:
>From: solan@smauguio.no (Svein Olav G. Nyberg)
>
>|> Anyway. I think what Randall showed is not that a sentence in itself
>|> is true, you're right. IF "a sentence in itself" is understood to
>|> mean an UNINTERPRETED sentence. But what does seem correct is that
>|> a sentence can be thought of as interpreted in a context in which
>|> there is no one to interpret it. THAT is what Randall showed.
>
>>No, Randall showed that a conviction\belief can be true even if
>>non-checkable. (It does make asignment of truth value in those
>>cases rather arbitrary, though.)
>
>Huh?
>I have no idea why you think he showed that.

Neither do I.  I'm on Jamie's side of this argument; truth (of
sentences in a certain language) is not defined in terms of observers
or interpreters.  Take my argument and apply it, further, to the truth
or falsehood of a sentence which has never in fact been uttered by
anyone (it would be self-defeating for me to give a counterexample,
but counting arguments show that there are such).  I don't agree with
Jamie on "types and tokens" (sentences are not equivalence classes of
tokens), precisely because the canons which determine truth or
falsehood of a sentence could in fact be applied to the so far
unuttered sentence which has no "tokens" at all; I think of sentences
as abstract objects of the same order as numbers.  By the way, there
is nothing arbitrary about the assignment of truth value to the kind
of sentence in my example; it is simply that we are not in a position
to find out what the correct assignment is.

[...]

>
>Jamie





-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu