Meaning and Truth Theory

Abstract

Abstract A speaker of English hears the sounds ‘the sun is hot’ and knows that they mean that the sun is hot. This episode of semantic insight is part of the general competence of an English speaker to interpret the expressions of his language on the basis of their physical makeup. Given the epistemic character of this competence, we may be led to seek for an explicit statement of the knowledge which sustains it. What facts about English does one who has mastered it thereby know? Since his competence spans an infinite number of expressions, the knowledge cannot be stated by listing his separate interpretations of each. Rather, we have to ascribe to him some general theory from which these intepretations flow, some finitely stated corpus of know ledge from which the meaning of each expression can be extracted.

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