From J. L. Austin to Ch. Travis : a Pragmatic Account of Truth ?

Bruno Ambroise (1)

1 CURAPP-ESS - Centre universitaire de recherches sur l'action publique et le politique. Epistémologie et Sciences sociales

In Philosophy of language nowadays it is generally agreed that the meaning of a sentence can be analyzed in terms of a proposition determining its truth-conditions. Meaning would thus allow us to determine straightforwardly the conditions in which the utterance of a sentence having that meaning would be true. By criticizing radically such an approach, often attributed to Frege1, Ch. Travis means to delink the meaning of words from their truth-conditions in order to show, by means of contextualist arguments, that truth is not a semantic property, but rather a pragmatic dimension of the evaluation of utterances, which is contextually assessed. In that process, Travis does not so much contest the Fregean account but rather retains some of its aspects that he associates with the radical anti-Platonist ideas of J.L. Austin.

Keywords: Truth; philosophy of language; pragmatics; semantics; Frege; Travis

Keywords: Vérité; philosophie du langage; pragmatique; sémantique

Domains: Philosophy

Bruno Ambroise. From J. L. Austin to Ch. Travis : a Pragmatic Account of Truth ?. 2013. ⟨halshs-00916223⟩