Must Existence‐Questions Have Answers?
Sometimes when a presupposition fails, ‘the whole assertive enterprise is wrecked’ (Strawson's phrase). When the assertive enterprise is not wrecked, we have a case of non-catastrophic presupposition failure. This chapter proposes a theory of why a false presupposition does not always bring the assertive act down with it, and the philosophical implications are considered.
Keywords: assertion, presupposition, content, enthymeme, worlds, Strawson, incremental content, context set
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .