“Obviously in the case of this sentence, and equally
obviously in the case of many others, we cannot talk of the sentence being true
or false, but only of its being used to make a true or false assertion, or (if
this is preferred) to express a true or a false proposition” (Strawson 1950, p. 326).
What Strawson is saying here is that a simple sentence by
itself doesn’t have a truth value, but what we can assert from the sentence
determines its truth value. The example given was "The king of France is
wise" would normally not be true since this entity doesn’t exist, but if
it were uttered during a different time where a king did exist the meaning of
the sentence changes and the truth value can become true despite using the same
sentence.
This idea has advantages over other theories since this
seems to give some flexibility to what we say. Instead of looking at the truth
value alone we can look more deeply into the meaning of the sentence to see
what one is thinking/saying (which I believe is closer to how we actually
think).
Despite the improvements, I wonder if some sentences can
have an absolute value not based upon assertions or propositions such as math (2+2=4),
unless equations are also assertions.
I completely agree with you when you talked about how this theory gives some flexibility to what we say and how we can try to see what someone is actually thinking or saying. I thought it was interesting that you brought a small part of math into this discussion when talking about sentences having an absolute value not based upon assertions or propositions. I think that is a very good topic to bring up here. The conversation about what determines truth value in a sentence is always a good one to have because of the easily-constructed contradictions and pathways. Overall, great post!
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