Abstract
There is a prima facie conflict between things Frege says about truth and Austins' insight that 'truth' does not name a property that true-things share, but instead one sort of success that statements can enjoy. Whether statements so enjoy depends on the occasion of assessing that success.The meaning of the word 'true' is unfolded in the laws of being true.
Frege 1956, p.59
If Frege is right, then part of what it is for a statement to enjoy the success of being true, is for the laws of truth to apply to it.
Logical laws are true in virtue of their structure. But a thought has a structure only insofar as it belongs to a system of thoughts. The elements of which it is structured are nothing but reflections of particular samenesses in ranges of thoughts - what is in common, for example, to the thoughts Fa, Fb, Fc,
Travis 2010, p.120
Austin's insight on the other hand, or Travis' reading of it, has the consequence that any purported truthbearer which can be identified by a structural description admits of understandings. He argues for this (partially) via producing Travis cases: pairs of uses of some representation that share an individuating structural description where, despite things not relevantly changing, one use expresses a truth, the other a falsehood…
| Date of Award | 2021 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Mark Textor (Supervisor) & Matthew Soteriou (Supervisor) |