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Thus it is possible (I am not saying it is true) that you could have a relational theory of truth – that calling something true is relating it to something else that makes it true – without yet having any idea as to what sort of thing that might be.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Before we worry about what the other term of the truth relation (assuming that’s what it is) might be, what about the first term. What is it that is the bearer or vehicle of truth? This is a question within that part of Epistemology known as philosophical logic (‘philosophical’ because it is not concerned with the technical or computational questions of logic, which do not form part of Epistemology).

A natural answer is the sentence. We talk in sentences. We write in sentences. So it is sentences that are true or false. Already this requires qualification. Imperative sentences (those which express commands such as ‘Report at 8.00 p.m. sharp’) are neither true nor false. Interrogative sentences (those which convey questions such as ‘When is the first assignment due?’) are neither true nor false. We mean indicative sentences (those that purport to convey information such as ‘Sydney is between Brisbane and Melbourne’.)

Sounds simple. In which case, how many sentences do we have below?:

(1)  The sky is blue

(2)  The sky is blue

And:

(3)  Il cielo e’ blu.

There are two possible answers: two or three. On either version (3), the Italian translation, is a different sentence from the others. It comprises no English words, unlike the others, so it must be a different sentence. But do (1) and (2) constitute two sentences or one. The answer, you will not be surprised to learn, is that it all depends ….

Consider a seemingly unrelated question. How many coins are there in the Australian currency? There are two possible answers. One is six. The other is several (I don’t know how many) millions! What’s the explanation? There are six coin types (namely, the 5 cents, 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents, 1 dollar, and 2 dollars denominations). But there are several million coin tokens, i.e. exemplifications of each type.

The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 – 1914), the originator of what came to be known as the American Pragmatist movement in philosophy, applied this distinction to language. He distinguished between word types and word tokens. (Thus there are more word tokens on this page than there are word types. Can you see why?) Similarly there are sentence types and sentence tokens. And while (1) and (2) are different sentence tokens, they represent only one sentence type. Thus if we are counting sentence tokens the answer is three; if counting sentence types, the answer is two.

But how many truths are there stated by (1), (2), and (3)? (Assume they are said on a cloudless sunny day!) Do any of them add to, or detract from, what any of the others say? Presumably not. In which case we have expressed exactly one truth. So if there is only one truth, there is only one thing to be true; there is only one vehicle or bearer of truth, in this particular case. And this leads to the view that the vehicle of truth is not a sentence (we’ve just shown that is impossible), but that which is expressed by a set of synonym本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。