Blogosophy

Truth in a manner of

Truth in a manner of speaking

Wo wonders what I mean by the operator "a manner of speaking", specifically what are the truth values. I wonder myself sometimes, or at least I wonder whether there are well-known and accepted objections to this line of thought, but I'll try to fill in some details.

P is true "in a manner of speaking" iff P would be true assuming that:

1. We took assertions in fiction A at face value ("Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street.") OR


2. In addition to 1, we took assertions in fiction B at face value as long as they didn't contradict anything in A ("Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe are in the same profession.") OR


3. In addition to 1 we took all actual facts that didn't contradict A as true ("At the end of the street where Sherlock Holmes lived is Regents Park.")

I haven't read wo's positive theory of fictional characters yet, so I don't know why wo thinks there's a problem with the notion that there are differing modes of speaking about fictional characters, only that wo disagrees with it. Posted by joshua at May 27, 2003 11:12 AM