Page 309 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

speaker, the addressee, and the time of utterance. Quine calls such sentences occasion sentences, con- trasting them with standing sentences whose truth value is less context-dependent. Once I have decided to assent to 'Apples grow on trees,' I shall do so in any context.
1. A Matter of Degree
The distinction is a matter of degree. 'Rome is the capital of Italy' is hardly an occasion sentence but political change could make it false. An eternal sen- tence is a standing sentence 'of an extreme kind': 'its truth value stays fixed through time and from speaker to speaker' (Quine 1960:193). Examples include truths of scientific theory and mathematics, and descriptions of particular events can also be provided by eternal sentences: tense, personal pronouns, and demon- stratives can be replaced by descriptions of the time, place, and people and things involved. Thus The bird that was observed by so-and-so at 3 pm on June 3, 1990 at such-and-such place was a seagull' is an eternal sentence describing the event mentioned in our first example. Not all standing sentences are eternal: for example, 'Germany has been unified.'
2. Eternal Sentences and Propositions
If I say 'You are angry' and you subsequently say 'I was then angry,' then, in one sense, we say the same thing: i.e., express the same proposition; the utterances are either both true or both false. Many philosophers
have argued that propositions, abstract objects which are expressed by utterances, do not exist: they hold that no clear account of them has been provided. Eternal sentences can serve as surrogates for prop- ositions: the same eternal sentence could have been uttered on both occasions. Truth and falsehood can be seen as straightforward properties of eternal sen- tences, and no relativity to context is required. Logical laws are also normally formulated for propositions rather than sentences: this illuminates the systematic relations between the truth values of different occasion sentences in related contexts and simplifies the for- mulation of the laws. The same benefits are obtained if the laws are formulated for eternal sentences.
One cannot always find an eternal sentence which gives the content of a thought. The belief that a meet- ing is beginning now can move one to act although the thought that the meeting is at 3 pm would not, since one may not know that it is now 3 pm (Perry 1979). It is compatible with this that the facts of nature can all be expressed by eternal sentences.
See also: Indeterminacy of Translation; Proposition; Truth.
Bibliography
Perry J 1979 The problem of the essential indexical. Nous 13:3-21
Quine W V O 1960 Word and Object. Technology Press of the MIT, Cambridge, MA
Quine W V O 1970 Philosophy of Logic. Prentice-Hall, Engle- wood Cliffs, NJ
The idea of a proposition has played a central role in the development of logic, philosophy of language, philosophical psychology, and theoretical linguistics. A simple example illustrates the features of prop- ositions that help explain their usefulness. I say that King is a scary dog; you believe it, remember it, and say it yourself at times—usually in English, but some- times in French or German; whether or not it is true depends only on a fact about King; if it is true, it never was nor will be false (though it might have been false); it implies that King is a dog, and it is compatible with King's being a German Shepherd dog. Propositions, then, as standardly understood, are contents of utter- ances and of propositional attitudes, they are not indi- viduated in terms of any particular language, they are tightly bound up with, or identical to, their
truth conditions, they are unchanging bearers of truth, falsity, contingency, or necessity, and they stand in relations of entailment, exclusion, and compatibility.
1. The Theoretical Status of Propositions
The usefulness of propositions does not arise simply from the number and importance of these individual uses; the real work is done by the systematic connec- tions propositions allow us to make among language, thought, truth, and the world. Communication in- volves (often) saying something one believes—and thereby causing others to believe the same thing. Truthfulness and knowledge involve uttering and believing things that are true. Representation and communication are just the storage and exchange of
Proposition M. Crimmins
Proposition
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