Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs.

This idea was clearly articulated by Davidson (1989, 11): Just as in measuring weight we need a collection of entities which have a structure{ XE "structure" } in which we can reflect the relations between weighty objects, so in attributing states of belief{ XE "belief" } (and other propositional attitude{ XE "attitude: propositional" }s) we need a collection of entities related in ways that will allow us to keep track of the relevant properties of the various psychological states.

Another story, however, can be told: a story which construes the switch from the more traditional, "static" semantic theories to the more recent, "dynamic" ones, like DRT, in terms of acknowledging certain inferential properties of certain sentences (prototypically those involving anaphora) - properties which are hard to account for with recourse only to traditional tools.

DRS's; (B) the inferential properties of DRS's are in some sense more explicit than those of English sentences (the properties can be somehow read off from the DRS's themselves); and (C) (3) corresponds to Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it. This yields an understanding of the nature of the praxis of semantic analysis which may differ dramatically from the commonsense view.

Even if we accept the assumption that semantics is a matter of particulars of such a kind, we simply have to assume that these particulars can be somehow equated over speakers; that they have some properties which make them treatable as different tokens of same types14.

One of the clearest articulations of the semiotic approach was given by Charles Morris: 'The properties of being a sign, a designatum, an interpreter, or an interpretant are relational properties which things take on by participating in the functional process of semiosis.

If we accepted the semiotic view, then we could not see any problem in determining whether 'N' refers to A or B even if A and B had precisely the same properties; 'N' would simply unequivocally refer to that object which took part in the relevant process of semiosis.

Hence we may say that a part-whole system is an algebra A, for which the relation PA has the properties appropriate for the relation of an immediate (proper) part.

For in order to know the nature of God (whose existence has been established by the preceding reasonings), as far as my own nature permitted, I had only to consider in reference to all the properties of which I found in my mind some idea, whether their possession was a mark of perfection; and I was assured that no one which indicated any imperfection was in him, and that none of the rest was awanting.

If it is correct to say the general proposition is a shorthand for a logical product or sum, as it is in some cases, then the class of things named in the product or sum is defined in the grammar, not by properties.