Truth-conditional semantics

Truth-conditional semantics is an approach to semantics of natural language that sees meaning (or at least the meaning of assertions) as being the same as, or reducible to, their truth conditions. This approach to semantics is principally associated with Donald Davidson, and attempts to carry out for the semantics of natural language what Tarski's semantic theory of truth achieves for the semantics of logic. Truth-conditional theories of semantics attempt to define the meaning of a given proposition by explaining when the sentence is true. So, for example, because 'snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white, the meaning of 'snow is white' is snow is white. The first truth-conditional semantics was developed by Donald Davidson in Truth and Meaning (1967). It applied Tarski's semantic theory of truth to a problem it was not intended to solve, that of giving the meaning of a sentence. Scott Soames has harshly criticized truth-conditional semantics on the grounds that it is either wrong or uselessly circular. Under its traditional formulation, truth-conditional semantics gives every necessary truth precisely the same meaning, for all of them are true under precisely the same conditions (namely, all of them). And since the truth conditions of any unnecessarily true sentence are equivalent to the conjunction of those truth conditions and any necessary truth, any sentence means the same as its meaning plus a necessary truth. For example, if "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white, then it is trivially the case that "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white and 2+2=4, therefore under truth-conditional semantics "snow is white" means both that snow is white and that 2+2=4. Soames argues further that reformulations that attempt to account for this problem must beg the question. In specifying precisely which of the infinite number of truth-conditions for a sentence will count towards its meaning, one must take the meaning of the sentence as a guide.

À propos de ce résultat

Cette page est générée automatiquement et peut contenir des informations qui ne sont pas correctes, complètes, à jour ou pertinentes par rapport à votre recherche. Il en va de même pour toutes les autres pages de ce site. Veillez à vérifier les informations auprès des sources officielles de l'EPFL.

Concepts associés (3)

Philosophie du langage

La philosophie du langage est la branche de la philosophie qui s'intéresse aux langages, et plus particulièrement à la signification, à la référence ou au sens en général, à son usage, à son apprentissage et à ses processus de création, ainsi qu'à sa compréhension, à la communication en général, à l'interprétation et à la traduction.

Truth-conditional semantics

Sémantique formelle

En linguistique, la sémantique formelle cherche à comprendre le sens (linguistique) en construisant des modèles mathématiques précis des principes utilisés par le locuteur pour définir la relation entre des expressions en langage naturel et l’environnement supportant un discours faisant sens. Les outils mathématiques utilisés sont une combinaison de logique mathématique et de langage formel théorique, plus particulièrement de lambda-calcul typé.