《Dummett》.pdf

~}~~ --: ~ 8\c:--~ ,~~ ~\~~ ~\ AGV-\ 0\ivll~~ - Vt-\I 0 ~ \j\\-L f t\ i~~fC\ c I. Truth (1959) _._ Flr.GE HELD THAT truth and falsity are the references of sentences. Sentences cannot stand for propositions (what Frege calls thoughts), since the reference of a complex expression depends only on the reference of its parts; whereas if we substitute for a singular term occurring in a sentence another aingular term with the same reference but a different sense, the sense of the whole sentence, i.e. the thought which it expresses, changes. The only thing which it appears must in these circumstances remain unchanged is the truth- value of the sentence. The expressions is true and is false look like predi- cates applying to propositions, and one might suppose that truth and falsity were properties of propositions; but it now appears that the relation between aproposition and its truth-value is not like that between a table and its shape, but rather like that between the sense of a definite description and the actual object for which it stands. To the objection that there are non-truth-functional occurrences of sen- tences as parts of complex sentences, e.g., clauses in indirect speech, Frege replies that in such contexts we must take ordinary singular terms as stand- ing, not for their customary reference, but for their sense, and hence we may say that in such a context, and only then, a sentence stands for the proposi- tion it usually expresses. Ifsomeone asks, But what kind of entities are these truth-values supposed to be?, we may reply that there is no more difficulty in seeing what the truth- value of a sentence may be than there is in seeing what the direction