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There's a school of language philosophy that says that the existence of a dragon is a false premise, and thus that every predicate is true for it. Others would
by tgv 4y ago
There's a school of language philosophy that says that the existence of a dragon is a false premise, and thus that every predicate is true for it. Others would claim that such sentence aren't true nor false. The archetypical example is "The king of France is bald".
However ... no theory of (natural) language has been consistent with human judgement, so all these attempts to formalize semantics should be take with a large grain of salt. They are attempts, not even theories.
- blowski 4y agoAn episode of the BBC Radio programme "In Our Time" discussed this. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v59gz https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v59gz
- philwelch 4y ago> Others would claim that such sentence aren't true nor false. The archetypical example is "The king of France is bald". This depends on whether you’re a Legitimist or an Orleanist. And even then, the Orleanist claimant is only “balding”, looks to be around 4 or so on the Norwood scale.
- tgv 4y agoOut-of-touchists, more likely. Imagine squabbling about the legitimacy of the Treaty of Utrecht.