[FOM] On >>this sentence cannot be proven true<<

[laureano luna]

>The 
>ambiguous term in it is the pronoun 'its', which
>gains its reference 
>from some preceeding expression, but which is left
>dangling without 
>such in the doubly-quoted place.  More generally,
>one can give a 
>number, or individuating description, locating some
>sentence or 
>phrase '....its....', but if the pronoun's
>antecedent is not within 
>that sentence or phrase then the sentence or phrase
>will not have a 
>fixed meaning, nor therefore, if it is a sentence, a
>truth-value.

I believe that the dangling 'its' in the doubly quoted
expression is harmless for the meaningfulness of the
resulting sentence, because the doubly quoted part of
it can be taken as a pure syntactical object and has
no need to have a meaning. 

It's just like

  ''blahblahblah' contains twelve letters'

or

   ''appended to its own quotation yields no sentence
containing fifty words' appended to its own quotation
yields no sentence containing fifty words'

which seem both evidently true.

The second 'its' in the Quinean sentence determines
its reference from the doubly quoted part, which is
indeed inside the sentence, so that all the sentence
needs to fix its meaning is the linguistic code and
the sentence itself; consequently, the sentence seems
reasonably context-free.

>The problem is that the contextuality of things >like
''the sentence 
>at the top of p. n of book X does not express a true
>proposition' (in 
>this case its variability of truth value with
>respect to different 
>possible worlds) cannot be removed.

If dependence on possible worlds could render a
sentence meaningless or non propositional, this would
also happen with

  'Roman dictator Julius Caius Caesar expressed
painful surprise in his last utterance'

Regards,

Laureano Luna 


		
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