Linguistique de l’écrit

Revue internationale en libre accès

Revue | Volume | Article

234257

A general argument against structured propositions

Peter Pagin

pp. 1501-1528

Résumé

The standard argument against ordered tuples as propositions is that it is arbitrary what truth-conditions they should have. In this paper we generalize that argument. Firstly, we require that propositions have truth-conditions intrinsically. Secondly, we require strongly equivalent truth-conditions to be identical. Thirdly, we provide a formal framework, taken from Graph Theory, to characterize structure and structured objects in general. The argument in a nutshell is this: structured objects are too fine-grained to be identical to truth-conditions. Without identity, there is no privileged mapping from structured objects to truth-conditions, and hence structured objects do not have truth-conditions intrinsically. Therefore, propositions are not structured objects.

Détails de la publication

Publié dans:

(2019) Synthese 196 (4).

Pages: 1501-1528

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-016-1244-4

Citation complète:

Pagin Peter, 2019, A general argument against structured propositions. Synthese 196 (4), 1501-1528. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1244-4.