Research Catalog

Title

Truth be told : sense, quantity, and extension / John Justice.

Author

Justice, John, 1944-

Publication

New York : Peter Lang, [2015]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

vi, 79 pages; 23 cm.

Summary

"Truth Be Told explains how truth and falsity result from relations that sentences have to the contexts in which they occur and the circumstances at which they are evaluated. It offers a precise conception of truth and a clear diagnosis of the Liar and Grelling paradoxes. Currently, semantic theory employs generalized quantifiers as the extensions of noun phrases in explanations of the composition of truth-values. Generalized quantifiers are direct descendants of the second-level functions to truth-values that Gottlob Frege considered to be the referents of his unrestricted quantifiers. During the past fifty years, Frege's original quantifier referents have been revised and generalized with the result that now every noun phrase, of any type, has a generalized quantifier as its extension. This evolution of noun-phrase extensions from Frege's referents has retained two of the original theory's flaws. First, generalized quantifiers inherit a troublesome intrusion of predicate extensions. Second, the senses of names and deictic terms are still not identified, with the result that their extensions are not sharply distinguished from their referents. Truth Be Told frees semantic theory from these Fregean flaws. Its theory of sense, quantity, and extension yields an intuitive composition of sentence truth-values and secures an accurate understanding of truth. Its final chapter applies the theory in a diagnosis of the Liar and Grelling paradoxes that is immune to the notorious revenge paradoxes."--Publisher's Web site.

Series Statement

Berkeley insights in linguistics and semiotics ; vol. 97

Uniform Title

Berkeley insights in linguistics and semiotics ; v. 97.

Subject

• Semantics
• Semantics (Philosophy)
• Liar paradox
• Truth
• Liar paradox

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Reflexive senses -- Sense and quantity -- Fixing extensions -- Formal semantics -- Liar paradoxes : the irreflexivity of extension reports.

ISBN

• 9781433130090 (hardcover : alk. paper)
• 1433130092 (hardcover : alk. paper)
• 9781453915325 (e-book) (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

^^2014048956

OCLC

902986099

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library