Truth Conditional Theories of Meaning

Truth Condtional Theories of Meaning

Truth condition: conditon under which sentence is/would be true

Key Argument in favour -- compositionality 

Basic thesis: to know a sentence's meaning is to know it's truth conditions.

Davidson's Approach

• Asks how we might provide a theory for a particular language
• We need to explain potential for infinite sentences through the finite features of language 
• The small, manageable features serve as 'meaning atoms'; these combine with rules of compositon

The thesis of compositionality: meaning of a sentence is a function of its constituent parts; to understand complex sentences, we decompose them, and compute complex meaning 

Example -- OAFISH: consists of just a few predicates, constants, and connectives.

Truth definition generates truth conditions.

Tarski's truth definitions: a way of deriving every sentence's truth conditions, from recursive definition. From a T-theory of L, we can derve a…