Skip to content
Carmelics
TopicsThinkersChangesContributorsLoading account…

    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

    Navigate

    • Topics
    • Search
    • Recent Changes
    • Contribute
    • How It Works
    • Glossary
    • Thinkers
    • Contributors
    • About
    • Statistics
    • Terms
    • Privacy

    Database

    Statements
    —
    Perspectives
    —
    Topics
    —

    Press ? for keyboard shortcuts

    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    A semantic theory that limits its ontology to sentence ty... — Carmelics
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Philosophy of Language
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    A semantic theory that limits its ontology to sentence types cannot provide a true analysis of propositional attitude sentences such as 'Seneca believed that man is a rational animal'.

    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Sentence types are individuated by syntactic and phonological properties, not by the cognitive content they express across languages or contexts.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Frege's puzzle shows that 'Hesperus is Hesperus' and 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' differ in cognitive significance despite sharing truth conditions, a difference sentence types cannot capture.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.Propositional attitude verbs like 'believes' are intensional operators requiring fine-grained objects of belief that sentence types, lacking intensional identity conditions, cannot supply.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Church's translation argument demonstrates that replacing a that-clause with a synonymous translation changes the sentence type while preserving the reported belief, proving sentence types are not the objects of belief.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.If sentence types were the objects of belief, a monolingual Latin speaker like Seneca could not hold beliefs expressible only in Greek, yet clearly he could hold such beliefs under any adequate theory of mind.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.If a semantic theory is restricted to sentence types rather than propositions, it lacks the resources to correctly capture the meaning of propositional attitude reports.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Church's translation argument (CTA) shows that any such restriction leads to semantic failures in the analysis of propositional attitude sentences.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Sign in or register to share your perspective on this statement.

    Next step

    Based on where you are in your exploration

    Strongest counterpoint
    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.

    Topics

    Philosophy of Language

    Key Terms

    Ontology(Carnap argues this enterprise is based on a mistake)
    The philosophical discipline that tries to answer hard questions about what there really is.
    Propositional attitude sentences(in philosophy of language and mind)
    Sentences that describe what someone believes, desires, hopes, or knows about something; they capture mental states directed at a proposition (like 'Sarah believes it will rain').
    Seneca(as a Stoic thinker mentioned as offering a more nuanced view)
    A Roman Stoic philosopher (4 BC - 65 AD) who wrote extensively about how to live a good life; he's known for acknowledging difficulties within Stoic philosophy that even other Stoics overlooked.
    analysis (philosophical)(as in 'Frege's analysis of number concepts')
    Breaking something down into its basic parts to understand how it works—like taking apart a clock to see what makes it tick.
    semantic theory(Davidsonian semantics)
    A theory that states all the facts about the meanings of expressions in a language
    sentence types(in logic and language)
    General categories of sentences rather than individual ones; for example, the sentence type 'All cats are animals' as a pattern, not just one written instance of it.

    Related

    Church's translation argument (CTA) shows that any such restriction leads to sem...Church's translation argument demonstrates that replacing a that-clause with a s...Frege's puzzle shows that 'Hesperus is Hesperus' and 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' di...If a semantic theory is restricted to sentence types rather than propositions, i...
    +3 moreShow less
    If sentence types were the objects of belief, a monolingual Latin speaker like S...

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: church
    View source passageHide passage
    A natural analysis of such sentences is that they express a relation between Seneca or Columbus and the propositions that man is a rational animal or that the world is round, where such propositions are objective abstract entities that are the ultimate vehicles of truth and meaning. But there has been—and no doubt always will be—skepticism about the existence of such entities and this has motivated the view that sentences such as (1) and (2) express relations between agents and sentence types or
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Propositional attitude verbs like 'believes' are intensional operators requiring...
    Sentence types are individuated by syntactic and phonological properties, not by...

    Similar

    If a semantic theory is restricted to sentence types rather than propo...89%Sentences expressing propositional attitudes (such as 'Seneca believed...86%Static semantic theories primarily aim to pair sentences with proposit...82%Foundational theories of meaning are answerable to semantic theorizing...79%
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit