On truth-gaps, truth-gluts, and bipolar propositions

On truth-gaps, bipolar belief and the assertability of vague propositions

This paper proposes an integrated approach to indeterminacy and epistemic uncertainty in order to model an intelligent agent’s decision making about the assertability of vague statements. Initially, valuation pairs are introduced as a model of truth-gaps for propositional logic sentences. These take the form of lower and upper truth-valuations representing absolutely true and not absolutely fal...

Necessary Truth and Grammatical Propositions

Presuppositions , Truth Values , and Expressing Propositions ∗

Philosophers like to talk about propositions. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps the most common is that philosophers are sometimes more interested in the content of a thought or utterance than in the particular sentence or utterance that might express it on some occasion. Propositions are offered as these contents. Like many philosophical notions, this one has been the subject of extensi...

Rejection and Truth-Value Gaps

A theorem due to Shoesmith and Smiley that axiomatizes twovalued multiple-conclusion logics is extended to partial logics. Rumfitt [1] extends Smiley’s [3] discussion of rejection by axiomatizing a calculus where truth values of sentences are given by truth tables that admit truth-value gaps. “The Smiley multiple-conclusion consequence relation” for the calculus is defined over assertions and r...

On the Psychology of Truth-Gaps

Bonini et al. [2] present psychological data that they take to support an ‘epistemic’ account of how vague predicates are used in natural language. We argue that their data more strongly supports a ‘gap’ theory of vagueness, and that their arguments against gap theories are flawed. Additionally, we present more experimental evidence that supports gap theories, and argue for a semantic/pragmatic...