[FOM] Reply to Franzen, Heck, Davis

[Hartley Slater]

Torkel Franzen replies to Dean Buckner (FOM Digest Vol 4 Issue 21):

>  In your earlier message to the list, you substituted a sentence for
>the first occurrence of "G" and a name of that sentence for the
>second occurrence of "G" - in short, just what is needed to make sense
>of "if G then G is true". So it doesn't appear that you're a counterexample
>to my earlier claim that "anybody who can follow the discussion can also
>decide when a G–del sentence for S is to be substituted for 'G' in my
>comments, and when a term designating a G–del sentence for S is
>to be substituted for 'G'."

Unfortunately, there is another option for substitution than the ones 
you have considered, so it would certainly be best if the intended 
reading was precisely indicated.  I refer to the case where no quotes 
are involved at all: after the 'then' the 'G' is short for 'that-G', 
as in, for instance, 'If snow is white, then that snow is white is 
true', which may also be written 'if snow is white, then it is true 
that snow is white'.

I have even heard it said about Tarski's T-scheme, which implies in 
this case 'if snow is white, then 'snow is white' is true', that it 
was a *necessary truth*, on account of the common confusion between 
that-clauses and quoted expressions .  The Tarskian conditional 
cannot be necessary, since the connection between words and what they 
stand for is always contingent; but the former conditional is 
necessary, since it is just an instantiation of 'if p then Lp' where 
'L' is the null or identity modality in the modal system T.
-- 
Barry Hartley Slater
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Philosophy, School of Humanities
University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley WA 6009, Australia
Ph: (08) 9380 1246 (W), 9386 4812 (H)
Fax: (08) 9380 1057
Url: http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/PhilosWWW/Staff/slater.html