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| | <pre> | | <pre> |
| − | I finish out the Subsection on "Propositions & Sentences" with
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| − | an account of how I use concepts like "assertion" and "denial".
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| − | An "expression" is a type of sign, for instance, a term or a sentence,
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| − | that has a value. In forming this conception of an expression, I am
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| − | deliberately leaving a number of options open, for example, whether
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| − | the expression amounts to a term or to a sentence and whether it
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| − | ought to be accounted as denoting a value or as connoting a value.
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| − | Perhaps the expression has different values under different lights,
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| − | and perhaps it relates to them differently in different respects.
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| − | In the end, what one calls an expression matters less than where
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| − | its value lies. Of course, no matter whether one chooses to call
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| − | an expression a "term" or a "sentence", if the value is an element
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| − | of %B%, then the expression affords the option of being treated as
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| − | a sentence, meaning that it is subject to assertion and composition
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| − | in the same way that any sentence is, having its value figure into
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| − | the values of larger expressions through the linkages of sentential
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| − | connectives, and affording us the consideration of what things in
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| − | what universe the corresponding proposition happens to indicate.
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| − | Expressions with this degree of flexibility in the types under
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| − | which they can be interpreted are difficult to translate from
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| − | their formal settings into more natural contexts. Indeed,
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| − | the whole issue can be difficult to talk about, or even
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| − | to think about, since the grammatical categories of
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| − | sentential clauses and noun phrases are rarely so
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| − | fluid in natural language settings are they can
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| − | be rendered in artificially formal arenas.
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| − | To finesse the issue of whether an expression denotes or connotes its value,
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| − | or else to create a general term that covers what both possibilities have
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| − | in common, one can say that an expression "evalues" its value.
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| | An "assertion" is just a sentence that is being used in a certain way, | | An "assertion" is just a sentence that is being used in a certain way, |
| | namely, to indicate the indication of the indicator function that the | | namely, to indicate the indication of the indicator function that the |
