Dummett, Michael
Emeritus Professor of Logic at Oxford University, Honorary Fellow of New College Oxford, and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College Oxford
Print publication date: 2006 (this edition)
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online:
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-920727-5
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199207275.003.0005
This chapter addresses the questions: what forces a truth-conditional theory of meaning or of content to be circular? And what would a non-circular theory be like? It argues that a non-circular theory of meaning would require a knowledge of the meaning of a sentence or word to include knowledge about how to use that sentence or word; a non-circular theory of content would demand a grasp of a proposition or of one of its constituent concepts to include knowledge about how to frame that proposition or some range of propositions involving that concept and to act on it
or them. Keywords:truth-conditional theory of meaning,
content,
Frege