…or…

It all depends on how you define it…not!

Because we’ll be studying how logic impacts meaning, truth, logical truth – what couldn’t be wrong -- I’d like to call this chapter “Meaning and Necessity”. But that’s already been taken. (Carnap, 195?). Another possibility would be “Naming and Necessity” because naming plays key role in the theory that follows. But that title is Kripke’s (1980).

Carnap (in the empiricist tradition) thought that all of what we call “logical truth” is just a matter of definition. Something like
All triangles have three sides.
must be true because a triangle is defined in terms of it’s three angles each of which opens onto a side.

Hume said that these were “relations of ideas”. If you get the ideas expressed in the sentence, then you know it must be true. Other examples:
All green things are extended.
All humans are rational.
If you know what it is for something to be green or human, then you know that they must be extended or rational. Or so goes the concern.

A priori knowledge and necessity…analytic truth.

Meaning is just definition…the idea expressed. Well, maybe not. We should be very careful here. Sometimes we give definitions (e.g., triangle) and understand truth based on a priori reasoning. But sometimes it’s not so straightforward.

Kripke…H20…Quine’s example

Page 2: Cfcs and necessities…possible worlds (fictions?) Kripke on dice worlds...essential properties, natural kinds, rigid designation.

Page 3: Baby CFC logic…A>B means that B would hold in a cfc situation. But what is “relevant”??? PERSPECTIVE DEPENDENCE, PART I!

Page 4: Baby Modal Logic. Definition. Examples. You give some models.

Page 5: Kripke-Putnam-Quine (for Quine, at least a bit of vindication: meaning is not via definition or a priori.)

Page 6: Mind and Identity and Logical Spirituality: Chalmers. (The new mode for the Discovery Institute? Anti-materialism?) But is this chauvinistic? Are we assuming there’s some Truth where we shouldn’t…that science must be true? (Postmodern anguish…)

Page 7: Perspective and 2-dim…we can consider the XYZ world as good as ours? Maybe it IS ours? IF so, then …

Page 8: Jackson/Chalmers…zombies and 2-d…but can the PERSPECTIVE thing be a two edged sword? Maybe the zombie world is just our world from the perspective that we don’t want to think about cognitive states. Maybe cognitive states are a way of systematizing.