suppose x believes what x expresses by 'Hes is Hes' but it turns out 'Hes' is empty? It seems to me that even if x believes a gappy proposition, and even if you manage to assign 'True' to it, the believer has gone wrong.
only in the idealized world of formal languages can you be sure you're not going wrong.
I think something is only a tautology if it is a necessarily true proposition. My own view is that gappy propositions are not propositions (just as fake money is not money).
What if I believe a tautology because my horoscope told me that I couldn't go wrong believing the first thing I read today, and the first thing I read today was a very complex tautology?
That might be a fairly standard understanding of tautologies. But then you can't believe or deny a tautology, since one doesn't believe or deny sentences, but their propositional content.
That said, I have an eccentric view of language on which I deny that something can be an assertoric sentence without expressing a proposition, and I deny that can express a proposition without being true or false. (The view is related to that in the Tractatus.)
Can you believe a tautology? That is, can you believe a tautology?
ReplyDeleteWell, if you can't believe it, then you certainly can't go wrong believing it!
ReplyDeletesuppose x believes what x expresses by 'Hes is Hes' but it turns out 'Hes' is empty? It seems to me that even if x believes a gappy proposition, and even if you manage to assign 'True' to it, the believer has gone wrong.
ReplyDeleteonly in the idealized world of formal languages can you be sure you're not going wrong.
I think something is only a tautology if it is a necessarily true proposition. My own view is that gappy propositions are not propositions (just as fake money is not money).
ReplyDeleteWhat if I believe a tautology because my horoscope told me that I couldn't go wrong believing the first thing I read today, and the first thing I read today was a very complex tautology?
ReplyDeleteA tautology is a fault of style. Stylistically at least one can go wrong believing a tautology.
ReplyDeleteSkeptical:
ReplyDeleteClever, but alas I think not clever enough, since I qualified the claim with footnote to combat such examples.
Fine. But I insist that requiring a footnote makes this no better than a Deep* Thought.
ReplyDeleteFair enough. :-)
ReplyDeleteah, I thought a tautologousness was an attribute of sentences.
ReplyDeleteThat might be a fairly standard understanding of tautologies. But then you can't believe or deny a tautology, since one doesn't believe or deny sentences, but their propositional content.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I have an eccentric view of language on which I deny that something can be an assertoric sentence without expressing a proposition, and I deny that can express a proposition without being true or false. (The view is related to that in the Tractatus.)