Chapter 3 Language Key Concepts

Question 1

the branch of philosophy that addresses
questions like: ‘What is meaning?’; ‘How does language relate to reality?’; and ‘How do written and spoken words express thoughts?’.

Answer 1

philosophy of language (philosophical semantics)

Question 2

the formal study of arguments and inferences.

Answer 2

logic

Question 3

the study of the logical properties of words like ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, and
‘if…, then…’, i.e. how the presence of absence of these words affects the validity of arguments that
contain them in their premise(s) or conclusion. The basic unit in this branch of logic are atomic
statements, i.e. sentences that are either true or false.

Answer 3

sentential/propositional logic

Question 4

the study of the logical properties of predicates and quantifiers like ‘some’ and ‘all’.
First-order predicate logic involves quantifiers whose variables refer to individuals; second-order
predicate logic involves quantifiers that also refer to sets of individuals, or the extensions of
predicates

Answer 4

predicate logic

Question 5

the study of the logical properties of words like ‘know’.

Answer 5

epistemic logic

Question 6

the study of the logical properties of words like ‘possible’ and ‘necessary’.

Answer 6

modal logic

Question 7

the view that if a declarative sentence is meaningful, then there must be ways to
verify or falsify it.

Answer 7

verificationism

Question 8

the kind of justification one has when something can be known by reason alone.

Answer 8

a priori

Question 9

the kind of justification one has when something requires more than reason to
discover.

Answer 9

a posteriori

Question 10

a shift that occurred in philosophy in the late 19th and early 20th century, inspired
in part by the work of Frege and Wittgenstein, whereby philosophers became more preoccupied
with understanding the nature of language.

Answer 10

the linguist turn

Question 11

one of Frege’s central ideas about language, “to say what a word or
phrase means you have to say how it contributes to the meaning of complete sentences” (88).

Answer 11

the primacy of the sentence

Question 12

one of Frege’s central ideas about language, “if two words or phrases have the
same meaning, then we should be able to replace one of them with the other in any sentence…
without changing [its] meaning” (89).

Answer 12

compositionality

Question 13

the mode of presentation or means of identifying the referent of a name, predicate, or
sentence.

Answer 13

sense

Question 14

a particular person, place, or thing, in the case of a name; a truth-value in the case of a
statement; an extension or class of objects in the case of a predicate.

Answer 14

reference

Question 15

a notion Frege thought could be used instead of predicates in developing a theory
of meaning and reference. An open sentence is produced by removing one or more denoting
expressions from a sentence. It’s reference is the class of ordered pairs of objects that could be
substituted into the open slots to produce a true sentence.

Answer 15

open sentence

Question 16

the content expressed by a sentence. Two sentences in different languages may
nevertheless express the same proposition.

Answer 16

proposition

Question 17

the conditions of the actual world or some possible world that determine whether
a statement is true or false

Answer 17

truth conditions

Question 18

mental attitudes one can take toward a content or proposition, e.g. hope,
fear, believe, doubt, etc.

Answer 18

propositional attitudes

Question 19

an expression like ‘all’ or ‘every’ that we use to make a claim about everything
that exists in the universe.

Answer 19

universal quantifier

Question 20

an expression like ‘some’ that we use to make a claim about something about
at least one thing that exists in the universe.

Answer 20

existential quantifier

Question 21

a complete way all of reality might be. How things actually are is just one possibility
for how reality could be.

Answer 21

possible world

Question 22

an attempt to understand meaning and reference in terms of truth
conditions at and across possible worlds.

Answer 22

possible world semantics

Question 23

contexts in which the truth value of a sentence can vary when substituting coreferential
expressions, e.g. contexts involving sentential or propositional attitudes.

Answer 23

intensional contexts

Question 24

contexts in which the truth value of a sentence is preserved through
substitution of co-referential expressions.

Answer 24

extensional contexts

Question 25

an adjective that applies to statements whose truth value is determined entirely by their
meaning.

Answer 25

analytic

Question 26

an adjective that applies to statements whose truth value is not determined entirely by
their meaning.

Answer 26

synthetic

Question 27

a statement is possible iff it is true in at least one possible world.

Answer 27

possibility

Question 28

a statement is necessary iff it is true in all possible worlds.

Answer 28

necessity

Question 29

a statement is contingent iff it is true in at least one possible world and false in at least
one possible world.

Answer 29

contingency

Question 30

a statement is impossible iff it is false in all possible worlds

Answer 30

impossibility

Question 31

the thesis that all true identity statements between names are necessarily true.

Answer 31

necessity of identity

Question 32

a group of statements, the conclusion and the premise(s), in which the truth of
premise(s) is supposed to provide evidence of the truth of the conclusion.

Answer 32

argument

Question 33

a property that truth-preserving arguments have, i.e. arguments that are such that it is
impossible for the conclusion to be false if all of the premises are true.

Answer 33

validity

Question 34

a property arguments have that are valid and have all true premises. It follows that the
conclusion of a sound argument is always true.

Answer 34

soundness

Question 35

an example of a valid argument form. All arguments with this form fit into the
following template: “(P1) If A, then C; (P2) A; (C) C”.

Answer 35

modus ponens

Question 36

an example of an invalid or fallacious argument form. All arguments of
this form fit into the following template: “(P1) If A, then C; (P2) not-A; (C) not-C”.

Answer 36

denying the antecedent

Question 37

“and” statements, i.e. compound statements that fit into the template: “P and Q”.

Answer 37

conjunction

Question 38

“either…, or…” statements, i.e. compound statements that fit into the template: “P or
Q”.

Answer 38

disjunction

Question 39

“not” statements, i.e. compound statements that fit into the template: “not-P”.

Answer 39

negation

Question 40

“if…, then…” statements, i.e. compound statements that fit into the template: “if P,
then Q” or “P only if Q”. Any statement that replaces P is called the antecedent, and any statement
that replaces Q is called the consequent.

Answer 40

conditional

Question 41

a sentence that is true simply because of its form or syntax, e.g. any statement with the
form “P or not-P”.

Answer 41

logical truth

Question 42

the speech act of uttering a declarative sentence in order to get others to believe that
sentence is true.

Answer 42

assertion

Question 43

verbal behavior in which one uses language to assert, order, or question something.

Answer 43

speech act

Question 44

the paradox that arises when “in considering a lottery, it can be reasonable to
believe that each ticket won’t win, but not reasonable to think they all won’t win” (115)

Answer 44

lottery paradox