PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE语言哲学.pptVIP

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE HOW TO TALK ABOUT TALK LOGICAL SEMANTICS Remember: In logical grammar there are 5 kinds of expressions: Predicates: woman, sweet, walks Names: Fred, ∞, Colorado Definite descriptions: the square root of 4, the King of France, the man drinking a martini Logical operators: and, or, not, if, then, any, each, some, most, at least one. The first four are called “sentential connectives,” the remaining ones are called “quantifiers.” Sentences LOGICAL SEMANTICS Predicates stand for classes of things. So, apple stands for the class of apples. Note Well: When I asked the class what apple stood for some people said “a fruit.” But I wasn’t asking for an explanation of what apples are. I wasn’t asking for a dictionary definition. I was asking what things you would point to when teaching a child to use the word apple. That would be apples, of course. Comprende? Names stand for or refer to the single things they are names of. LOGICAL SEMANTICS Definite descriptions also refer or stand for single objects. The F stands for the unique thing that is F, if there is one. If there isn’t one, the definite description is improper. Examples Questions: Is the Rocky Mountains a name or a definite description? Is my father a definite description? Sentences stand for truth values. So all true sentences stand for the same thing, namely, the truth. Likewise for all false sentences. So here again we see the difference between meaning and reference. Not all true sentences have the same meaning! Otherwise there would be only one true statement to make! Sense and Reference We have seen that there are pairs of expressions that (a) have the same reference (nominatum), but (b) do not have the same sense or meaning. More examples It was Frege who first called attention to this rather obvious fact. But if it’s so obvious, what’s the big deal? The big deal is that such examples confirm that meaning (sense) and reference are not the same thing. In general, the mea