On Being True or False On Being True or False: Sentences, Propositions and What is Said By Merrill Ring On Being True or False: Sentences, Propositions and What is Said By Merrill Ring This book first published 2020 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2020 by Merrill Ring All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-4177-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-4177-1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 I. Opening the Case for a Non-Linguistic Truth-Bearer .......................... 3 II. The Case for Sentences as Truth-Bearers ........................................... 31 III. What is a Sentence? ............................................................................ 53 IV. Passing Sentence on Sentences ......................................................... 87 V. Beliefs as Truth-Bearers .................................................................. 111 VI. Propositions ..................................................................................... 133 VII. Truth-Bearers and Their Nature ...................................................... 165 Notes ....................................................................................................... 191 INTRODUCTION The question about what sort of thing has a truth-value, what kind of thing it is that is true or false, extends quite far back into the history of philosophy. At some periods of that history it has been a more prominent question than at others. We seem to be at a time when there is not much thought being expended on the topic. There are the usual scraps of discussion scattered here and there, but on the whole philosophers today are not much engaged with the issue, letting it lay fallow. That situation is probably the result of a stalemate, something that occurs in philosophy when no one has an idea that can break through the settled pattern of differing views as to the correct answer to a question. The one sign of a possible thaw is the recent reissuing (2009) of C.J.F. Williams What is Truth?1, a work, and I believe the only one, that does attempt to think through at some length what kind of thing a truth-bearer is. On the other hand, Williams’ book isn’t comprehensive enough. One major topic he dismisses out of hand is the view that sentences are the bearers of truth-value and that are consequently philosophically important items. The aim of the present book is to make the topic of what sorts of things have a truth-value more central to current philosophical occupation. The route to doing that is to provide for the first time a critically comprehensive look at the historical options and to produce an answer that goes far beyond anything that even the current best attempt, namely Williams’, has to offer. The examination here can’t be said to be complete-in raising many of the issues that must be examined in pursuit of a satisfactory answer, I have come to realize that some topics can’t be considered or adequately dealt with in a reasonably compact book. I think the major omission here is the topic of thoughts: to have tried to be fairly comprehensive about that really difficult problem would have impossibly extended this work. My initial idea was that pursuing the topic of truth-bearers was only a preliminary to the question of What is Truth? However, in attempting to do more than toss out some ideas, I came to realize that the matter was very rich, requiring investigation of many issues that at first glance seemed remote from the main concern. Who knew how much needed to be done in disentangling the contrasting conceptions of what a sentence is in philosophy and in linguistics and in arguing for a wholly new position? Can the notion of a proposition be freed from its metaphysical baggage (being a 2 Introduction transcendent object existing quite independently of human talk and thought) and retain a respectable possibility as something with a truth-value? What does Moore’s Paradox have to do with beliefs as truth-bearers? Those are some of the diverse topics that came to be examined as I tried to think my way through the larger issue. One further matter must be mentioned in these introductory remarks. I began this book quite a few years ago and have finished it only upon retirement from professing. A previous reader noticed that I had more references to philosophers writing some years ago and less to current work. That is true. However, as I mentioned above, that is one sign that there is currently a stalemate about how philosophically to proceed on the issue. I have not aimed at producing a book that is expected to become old fashioned, out of date, in a few years. My aim has been to write about the issues, about sentences, propositions, beliefs, being true or false, etc. As it had to be written at a certain time and place, no doubt many references will disclose that fact. But it is nonetheless about the topics discussed and it must be judged by the arguments and analyses concerning those matters and not the incidental references to particular people who have expressed views on those matters. I would like to thank especially Stephen Simon and William Hyde for their continuing interest in and criticism (often exasperated) of what I have to say here. I OPENING THE CASE FOR A NON-LINGUISTIC TRUTH-BEARER 1. Sorting Out the Issues The ultimate aim of an inquiry into the nature of truth must be that of making sense of the human practice of calling things true (or false). It has turned out, however, in consequence of philosophical attempts on that issue, that what looks to be a simple preliminary is more difficult than anticipated. That preliminary topic concerns what it is that is (in modern terminology) the bearer of truth-value. The question of what sort of thing is true or is false is not only troublesome but pregnant with implications and connections to a variety of other philosophical issues. Thus, an inquiry into truth-bearing is valuable in itself, though it is still preparatory to an investigation of the nature of truth.1 We may be tempted to put the question about truth-bearers as: what is it that is true or false? (The “or” is important since nothing can be both true and false-except, e.g., that William can be both a true Irishman and a false lover.) But that version, taken literally, would be satisfied by producing a long list of truths and falsehoods. What is philosophically wanted is not a list, but a characterization of the kind of thing that can be spoken of as true or false, the sort of thing that is subject to being true or being false. Still, that is not good enough as a guide to what we are philosophically after. For, as in the parenthetical remark above, “Irishman” and “lover” qualify as kinds of thing that are true or false. And yet it is not those kinds of thing, and other similar ones, which are relevant to the philosophical problem at hand.2 The cases of truth-bearing about which philosophical troubles arise are not those of, e.g. Irishmen or lovers, but those which start from someone's having said something, for example “He has no sense of humor”, to which a second person responds “That's true” or “That's not true” or “That's false”- or employs any of the many idiomatic variants of those expressions.3 4 I Such situations constitute the paradigm cases of truth talk, the basic phenomenon for an inquiry into what sort of thing truth-bearers are. Because such cases are the home ground for our talk of truth and falsity, we can say that what is displayed there is the primary use of the predicates “is true” and “is false”.4 To remind ourselves that the central occurrence of truth talk is in response to a claim that this is how things are, consider the alternatives. Philosophers often write as if the form “p is true/false” is the fundamental truth locution. Although that idea is an important source of redundancy theories of truth–if anyone actually were to say “Cows give milk is true”, that strange way of talking could only be understood to mean “Cows give milk”-that form of words probably never occurs outside of philosophical writing. Its occurrence there is most likely an unfortunate conflation of the conversational situation in which someone says something and a respondent comments on whether what was said is true or not: i.e. she says “Cows give milk”, someone says of that (of what she said) “That’s true”. Conflating the two remarks produces the misshapen “Cows give milk is true”. Just because “That” refers to what she said, namely “Cows give milk”, does not entitle one to conflate the words appropriate to two quite different acts, that of saying something and that of commenting on what was said.5 Of course “is true” is a predicate and perfectly appropriate in some linguistic contexts: “That’s true” is one such case, the widely recognized case of “Everything he said is true’” is yet another. But in (say) “Cows give milk is true” the “is true” is neither redundant nor eliminable: it simply has no place there, just as the square root sign does not. (I shall later reject on other grounds the disquotational variant “’p’ is true” where the “p” is to represent a sentence rather than what someone says.) It should also be noted that “true” can, with some nouns, occur attributively: “true belief” seems the most common case.