Talk:Proposition
From Academic Kids
This entry is very dictionary-ish... --k.lee
- I agree. But it could become a decent disambiguation page in the future. --mav
I've tried to rewrite the article into something managable (unfortunately I'm finding a lot of older Wikipedia philosophy articles read like bad lecture notes). I don't think it needs to be a disambiguation page yet, because the non-philosophical uses of proposition are (I think) fully explained in the short space they're given.
I'm worried I came out sounding a little too pro-proposition; it's difficult to cover a subject that some people claim don't exist without asserting its existence more often than not. If a better writer or someone more familiar with the arguments against propositions would like to extend that section or touch up the rest of the entry, please do. piman 04:30, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)
New lead paragraph
The old lead paragraph read:
- In modern philosophy, logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a sentence, rather than the sentence itself. In ordinary usage, a proposition is like an offer, a request, or a suggestion: it is something which is proposed. (Will you marry me? proposes matrimony.) This article is concerned with a related technical sense, in which any sentence, when asserted, proposes that a certain claim is true.
I deleted this paragraph and replaced it by:
- Propositions are a term used in logic to describe the content of assertions, content which may be taken as being true or false, and which are a non-linguistic abstraction from the linguistic sentence that constitutes an assertion. The nature of propositions are highly controversial amongst pohilosophers, many of whom are skeptical about the existence of propositions, and many logicians prefer to avoid use of the term proposition in favour of using sentences.
Points:
- The nature of propositions is highly controversial, and there is no consensus claiming that propositions are meanings of sentences. The term content is used to mean more or less the whatever it is of sentences that propositions are.
- The old attempt to explain proposition in terms of proposing something are unconvincing: the normal analysis of propositions is as assertions (as opposed to questions, commands, etc.). I changed this languages.
- It's worth highlighting the controversy and skepticism about propositions in the lead paragraph, I think. --- Charles Stewart 17:45, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
