PHIL120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Sentence Clause Structure, Nelson Goodman
9 Oct 2018
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Monday, September 24, 2018
Abercrombie met an islander who made a statement to him. Simply based off of the statement,
Abercrombie was able to conclude that the islander was a knave. What could the islander have possibly
said to Abercrombie?
Before solving this problem, it’s important to look at two different kinds of truth statements. There are
statements which are true before and after they are said, like the statement “2 + 2 = 4”. A truth
statement such as this one would likely have been known to Abercrombie. There are also truth
statements that are true before and after they are uttered, but their validity cannot be known simply
because they’ve been said. Take for example the statement, “Napoleon was a Frenchman”, Abercrombie
will not know if such a statement is true or false just because it has been said. There is also what is
known as a self-referential statement, which directly refer to themselves. An example of a
self-referential statement would be something like “I am a knave”. Don Quixote would be an example of
a self-referential piece of fiction, although possibly the most famous example of self-reference would be
the statement “This sentence is not true.”, otherwise known as the liar’s paradox.
An analysis would find that the islander might have said anything variety of complex sentence to
Abercrombie, such as, “I am a smart knave.” Now if we break this sentence down to its composite ideas,
“I am smart” and “I am a knave”, it becomes impossible, because as we previously established, no
islander, knave or knight, could ever claim to be a knave. But, if we consider this statement as a whole,
we see that not only can it be said, but it immediately reveals to us the identity of its speaker.
In the given table s will stand for “He is smart”, and n for “He is a knave”, while Con will stand for the
consistency of the statement, with 1 representing a consistent statement and 0 representing an
inconsistent one.
s
n
s and n
Con
T
T
T
0
T
F
F
0
F
T
F
1
F
F
T
0
Therefore Abercrombie can conclude that the islander is a knave, and that he is not smart.
It turns out that what the islander actually said was that he was not a silly knight. What can Abercrombie
know about the islander from this statement?
Document Summary
Abercrombie met an islander who made a statement to him. Abercrombie was able to conclude that the islander was a knave. Before solving this problem, it"s important to look at two different kinds of truth statements. There are statements which are true before and after they are said, like the statement 2 + 2 = 4 . A truth statement such as this one would likely have been known to abercrombie. There are also truth statements that are true before and after they are uttered, but their validity cannot be known simply because they"ve been said. Take for example the statement, napoleon was a frenchman , abercrombie will not know if such a statement is true or false just because it has been said. There is also what is known as a self-referential statement self-referential statement would be something like i am a knave .
