Truth-conditional semantics is an approach to semantics of

natural language A natural language or ordinary language is a language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages ...

that sees meaning (or at least the meaning of assertions) as being the same as, or reducible to, their truth conditions. This approach to semantics is principally associated with Donald Davidson, and attempts to carry out for the semantics of natural language what Tarski's semantic theory of truth achieves for the

semantics of logic In logic, the semantics of logic or formal semantics is the study of the meaning and interpretation of formal languages, formal systems, and (idealizations of) natural languages. This field seeks to provide precise mathematical models tha ...

. Truth-conditional theories of semantics attempt to define the meaning of a given proposition by explaining when the sentence is true. So, for example, because 'snow is white' is true

if and only if In logic and related fields such as mathematics and philosophy, "if and only if" (often shortened as "iff") is paraphrased by the biconditional, a logical connective between statements. The biconditional is true in two cases, where either bo ...

snow is white, the meaning of 'snow is white' is snow is white.

History

The first truth-conditional semantics was developed by Donald Davidson in '' Truth and Meaning'' (1967). It applied Tarski's semantic theory of truth to a problem it was not intended to solve, that of giving the meaning of a sentence.

Criticism

Refutation from necessary truths

Scott Soames has harshly criticized truth-conditional semantics on the grounds that it is either wrong or uselessly circular. Under its traditional formulation, truth-conditional semantics gives every necessary truth precisely the same meaning, for all of them are true under precisely the same conditions (namely, all of them). And since the truth conditions of any unnecessarily true sentence are equivalent to the conjunction of those truth conditions and any necessary truth, any sentence means the same as its meaning plus a necessary truth. For example, if ''"snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white'', then it is trivially the case that ''"snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white and 2+2=4'', therefore under truth-conditional semantics "snow is white" means both that snow is white and that 2+2=4. Soames argues further that reformulations that attempt to account for this problem must beg the question. In specifying precisely ''which'' of the infinite number of truth-conditions for a sentence will count towards its meaning, one must take the meaning of the sentence as a guide. However, we wanted to specify meaning with truth-conditions, whereas now we are specifying truth-conditions with meaning, rendering the entire process fruitless.

Refutation from deficiency

Michael Dummett (1975) has objected to Davidson's program on the grounds that such a theory of meaning will not explain what it is a speaker has to know in order for them to understand a sentence. Dummett believes a speaker must know three components of a sentence to understand its meaning: a theory of

sense A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the surroundings through the detection of Stimulus (physiology), stimuli. Although, in some cultures, five human senses were traditio ...

, indicating the part of the meaning that the speaker grasps; a theory of

reference A reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a ''nam ...

, which indicates what claims about the world are made by the sentence, and a theory of force, which indicates what kind of

speech act In the philosophy of language and linguistics, a speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. For example, the phrase "I would like the mashed potatoes; could you please pas ...

the expression performs. Dummett further argues that a theory based on inference, such as proof-theoretic semantics, provides a better foundation for this model than truth-conditional semantics does.

Pragmatic intrusion

Some authors working within the field of

pragmatics In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how Context (linguistics), context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship ...

have argued that linguistic meaning, understood as the output of a purely formal analysis of a sentence-type, underdetermines truth-conditions. These authors, sometimes labeled 'contextualists', argue that the role of pragmatic processes is not just pre-semantic (disambiguation or reference assignment) or post-semantic (drawing

implicatures In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly sayi ...

, determining speech acts), but is also key to determining the truth-conditions of an utterance. That is why some contextualists prefer to talk about 'truth-conditional pragmatics' instead of semantics.

Notes

References

* M. A. E. Dummett (1975). ‘What is a Theory of Meaning’. In S. Guttenplan (ed.), ''Mind and Language'', CUP. Reprinted in Dummett, ''The Seas of Language'', OUP, 1993. {{DEFAULTSORT:Truth-Conditional Semantics Semantics Meaning (philosophy of language) Formal semantics (natural language)