- From: Story Henry <henry.story@bblfish.net>
- Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 15:43:50 +0200
- To: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@att.net>
- Cc: Ontolog Forum <ontolog-forum@ontolog.cim3.net>, Semantic Web Forum <semantic-web@w3.org>, Arisbe <arisbe@stderr.org>, Inquiry <inquiry@stderr.org>
I need to read Donald Davidson [1] again, but he had a very
interesting observation taken from Tarski, namely that truth is a
predicate that applies to sentences.
"Snow is white" is true in English if and only iff Snow is white .
in the general case
"S" is true in L <=> S
Truth is therefore disquotational . It is a way of removing the
quotes from a statement.
Another way of looking at it is as follows. You have a resource
<http://john.eg/foaf.rdf>.
You get a representation back of which you can say
<http://john.eg/foaf.rdf> log:semantics { :joe a foaf:Person } .
if you believe it is true then you can add it to your database.
:joe a foaf:Person .
Now the other way of looking at truth is that there is a relation
between statements and reality.
That still holds. If you accept as true statements that are wrong,
reality will soon remind you of your mistake.
Henry
[1] Truth and Interpretation
On 1 Aug 2007, at 15:26, Jon Awbrey wrote:
> What is truth? It's a property of a sign, or a representation,
> that makes it a good sign, a representation that is so natured
> or so designed as to further the achievement its proper object.
Received on Wednesday, 1 August 2007 13:44:07 UTC