16 - Supplements

Summary

The multiplicity of semantic theories I have touched on in the last two lectures in the process of trying to achieve what seems to me to be a tenable preliminary concept of the meaning of an assertoric sentence may have left behind a certain confusion. So before taking up the problem to which the line of thought of the last lecture led it seems to me to be necessary to insert a lecture devoted to surveying what has been achieved. This will enable me to say something about the connections between the various positions and to add a supplement that will be important for what will follow.

The various theses about the meaning of assertoric sentences (a.s.) are as follows.

1. (1) One understands an a.s. if one knows for which state of affairs it stands.

2. (2) One understands an a.s. if one knows in which circumstances it is to be used.

3. (3) One understands an a.s. if one knows what its truth-conditions are.

4. (4) One understands an a.s. if one knows what its verification-rules are.

5. (5) One understands an a.s. if one knows what belief the person who uses it communicates to a hearer.

6. (6) One understands an a.s. if one knows which assertion-act a speaker can perform with it (illocutionary act theory).

7. (7) One understands an a.s. if one knows the verification-game whose opening-move is performed with it.

The most striking thing both about the line of thought as it has turned out and about virtually all important modern theories is the central position which the concept of truth suddenly acquires. You could say: that statements can be true or false is something one has always known. Before Frege, however, no one had hit upon the idea of defining the meaning – the sense – of a sentence by means of its truth-conditions. The ‘reality-relation’ of statements was also understood as truth in the philosophical tradition, but this relation always remained pre-defined as a relation to things (res), to beings. It is only when one is primarily orientated towards sentences rather than towards names that it seems natural to start with the possible truth of a sentence and by reference to this understand even its meaning.