Signification, closure and indirect speech reports

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Bradwardine’s solution to the the logical paradoxes depends on the idea that every sentence signifies many things, and its truth depends on things’ being wholly as it signifies. This idea is underpinned by his claim that a sentence signifies everything that follows from what it signifies. But the idea that signification is closed under entailment appears too strong, just as logical omniscience is unacceptable in the logic of knowledge. What is needed is a more restricted closure principle. A clue can be found in speech act pluralism, whereby indirect speech reports are closed under intersubstitutivity of co-referential terms. The conclusion is that solving the semantic paradoxes does not require revision of logic, thus saving logic from paradox.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)237-251
Number of pages15
JournalLogica Universalis
Volume9
Issue number2
Early online date11 Jan 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2015

Keywords

  • Paradox
  • Signification
  • Multiple-meaning
  • Bradwardine
  • Omniscience

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