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Indexical Color Predicates: Truth Conditional Semantics vs. Truth Conditional Pragmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Lenny Clapp
Lenny Clapp*
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University, Zulauf Hall 918, Dekalb, IL60115, USA
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Extract

Truth conditional semantics is the project of ‘determining a way of assigning truth conditions to sentences based on A) the extension of their constituents and B) their syntactic mode of combination’ (Rothschild and Segal, 2009). This research program has been subject to objections that take the form of underdetermination arguments, an influential instance of which is presented by Travis:

… consider the words ‘The leaf is green,’ speaking of a given leaf, and its condition at a given time, used so as to mean what they do mean in English. How many distinct things might be said in words with all that true of them? Many.… Suppose a Japanese maple leaf, turned brown, was painted green for a decoration. In sorting leaves by colour, one might truly call this one green. In describing leaves to help identify their species, it might, for all the paint, be false to call it that.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 71 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2012

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