User:KYPark/1957

In effect, Strawson abandons the idea that what is known as bivalent logic must be sufficient to explain ordinary language. Bivalent logic, also known as classical logic because of its origins in ancient philosophy, is the logic we have been working with in this chapter. It allows a choice between precisely two truth-values for any proposition: 'true' and 'false'. Strawson argues that in some contexts a statement may have neither of these values, because the question of its truth of falsity may just not arise. Some logicians have proposed a three-valued, or trivalent logic which is sometimes described as containing the values 'true', 'false' and 'neither-true-nor-false'. An example such as Russell's the king of France sentence, when the presupposition necessary for it to be either true or false fails, must be classified as having this third truth-value. Other logicians have suggested that it is possible to retain a bivalent system, as long as a 'truth-value gap' is included to account for such examples.

It is a testimony to Bertrand Russell's longevity and enduring interest in philosophy that in 1957, fifty-two years after originally publishing 'On denoting', he produced a response to Strawson's challenge, in an article entitled 'Mr Strawson on referring'. This response is short and polemical, and serves to highlight the differences between the approaches to the study of meaning adopted by Russell, with his interest in mathematical logic, and by Strawson. Russell sum up this difference, from his own point of view, by describing how many philosophers of the time, including Strawson,

Are persuaded that common speech is good enough not only for daily life, but also for philosophy. I, on the contrary, am persuaded that common speech is full of vagueness and inaccuracy, and that any attempt to be precise and accurate requires modification of common speech both as regards vocabulary and as regards syntax. (387)

Russell saw the task of the philosopher as being, in part, to modify imprecise natural language to reflect 'correct' logical structure. In his response, he reiterates his commitment to the idea that every meaningful sentence must, in accordance with classical logic, be either true of false. His aim had always been to find an adequate way of explaining this logic; ... (pp. 61-62) More...)