A many-valued semantics for category mistakes

Martin, John N.

doi:10.1007/bf00869471

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…If category mistakes are false, therefore, interpreting negative sentences as correcting category mistakes will run into the representation problem. We get to a similar conclusion if category mistakes are neither true nor false (a position adopted by Thomason (1972) and Martin (1975)). If (4) is neither true nor false then (20) will be true, yielding the same problem.…”

Section: Category Mistakesmentioning

confidence: 56%

“…We should note that the status of sentences with vacuous subjects and sentences involving category mistakes are philosophically contentious. For instance, while some agree with Aristotle that category mistakes are false, others, notably Russell (1908), regard them as literally senseless, while Martin (1975) and Thomason (1972) take them to be meaningful but neither true nor false. We will return to these options later.…”

Section: Some Important Distinctions: Contradictions Contraries Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

What is Apophaticism? Ways of Talking About an Ineffable God

Scott

Citron

2016

EJPR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Apophaticism – the view that God is both indescribable and inconceivable – is one of the great medieval traditions of philosophical thought about God, but it is largely overlooked by analytic philosophers of religion. This paper attempts to rehabilitate apophaticism as a serious philosophical option. We provide a clear formulation of the position, examine what could appropriately be said and thought about God if apophaticism is true, and consider ways to address the charge that apophaticism is self-defeating. In so doing we draw on recent work in the philosophy of language, touching on issues such as the nature of negation, category mistakes, fictionalism, and reductionism.

show abstract

Section: Category Mistakesmentioning

confidence: 56%

Section: Some Important Distinctions: Contradictions Contraries Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is Apophaticism? Ways of Talking About an Ineffable God

Scott

Citron

2016

EJPR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…If a sortal presupposition is so fundamental to a language that it sets the boundary for the category of its predicates, then it is a fundamental sortal presupposition for the language. To know more on the notion of sortal presuppositions, see Martin 1975. 8 Based on Kuhn's contextual theory of meaning, the meaning of 'planet' is determined by the content and taxonomy of Ptolemaic theory.…”

Section: Categorical Presuppositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Presuppositional Approach to Conceptual Schemes

Wang¹,

Xu²

2010

South African Journal of Philosophy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The current discussions of conceptual schemes and related topics are misguided; for they have been focused too much on the truth-conditional notions of meaning/concepts and translation/interpretation in Tarski's style. It is exactly due to such a Quinean interpretation of the notion of conceptual schemes that the very notion of conceptual schemes falls prey to Davidson's attack. I argue that what should concern us in the discussions of conceptual schemes and related issues, following the initiatives of I. Hacking, T. Kuhn, and N. Rescher, is not the truth-values of assertions, but rather the truthvalue-status of the sentences used to make the assertions. This is because the genuine conceptual innovation between alternative theories/languages does not lie in differences in determining the truth-values of their sentences, but turns on whether these sentences have truth-values when considered within the context of a competing one. The core of conceptual relativism does not consist in the claim that different conceptual schemes may yield incommensurable truth claims, but rather that different conceptual schemes may yield incompatible truth-value-status and therefore lead to distinct perceptions of reality. Conceptual schemes are no longer seen as sentential languages consisting of a set of sentences accepted as true, but rather seen as metaphysical presuppositions of presuppositional languages.In spite of its lasting popularity among many, the notion of conceptual schemes remains murky; widespread confusion lingers over its meaning. Even so, a particular notion of conceptual schemes has been 'popularized' by Donald Davidson (1984) through his well-received criticism, namely, the Quinean linguistic model of conceptual schemes. Such a notion of conceptual schemes faces many conceptual difficulties, and thus falls prey to Davidson's attack.Whatever the problems of the Quinean analysis might be, it is certainly not the only possible account of conceptual schemes. As many have pointed out, the Quinean model is, at best, a notion of conceptual schemes and it is not the notion to which

show abstract

“…Exponible sentences however frequently require such extensive rewriting of surface form that their syntax becomes implausible. To use a case based on Thomason, it is unconvincing to construe (27) which looks like a simple identity statement as the very complex (28). 5 A theory which rendered (27) as a simple identity statement would be better.…”

Section: Classical Theory and Exponibiliamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The theory is conceptually plausible, preserves classical logic, and has superlanguages as a special case. See also Herzberger [12], and Martin [25], [26], [28]. Second is a 2-valued non-truth-functional semantics with truth-operator of Bergmann [2], which in its own way gives a reasonable account of logical inference.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Discussion and Exposition

1979

Theoretical Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An attempt to refute recent critiques of semantic pressupposition. It is argued that the formal, semantic notion is correctly understood more narrowly than is current in linguistics, that its semantic study is fully compatible with pragmatic investigation and a large degree of contextual cancellation. Linguistic definitions of pressupposition are criticised, especially those in terms of entialment (a contraposition supporting logical implication) and necessitation, because they misapply the technical ideas. The success of the formal notion is appraised by giving a short summary of the development of manyvalued pressuppostion theories (including supervaluations) and pointing out the virtues of the later theories.

show abstract

A many-valued semantics for category mistakes

Cited by 7 publications

References 10 publications

What is Apophaticism? Ways of Talking About an Ineffable God

What is Apophaticism? Ways of Talking About an Ineffable God

A Presuppositional Approach to Conceptual Schemes

Discussion and Exposition

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About