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Theories of Truth and Learnable Languages

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Philosophy and Grammar

Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 143))

Abstract

By far the most interesting and most successful recent theories of meaning have been truth-conditional. The paradigm of such theories is usually taken to be Tarski’s recursive characterization of truth for certain formal languages.1 Donald Davidson has both practiced truth-conditional theorizing in the semantics of natural languages and pleaded for the general importance of truth-conditional semantics.2 What is even more interesting and more unique to him, Davidson has sought to give a deeper motivation — perhaps a foundation — for truth-conditional semantics of the kind pioneered by Tarski. This deeper foundation Davidson has sought in the requirement of learnability of the language in question.3

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© 1980 D. Reidel Publishing Company

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Hintikka, J. (1980). Theories of Truth and Learnable Languages. In: Kanger, S., Ōhman, S. (eds) Philosophy and Grammar. Synthese Library, vol 143. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9012-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9012-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-009-9014-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-9012-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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